


love letters and thoughts of the kind

by nostalgicshreylock (shreylock)



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: A Lot of internalised homophobia, Angst with a Happy Ending, First Kiss, Hurt/Comfort, Love Confessions, M/M, because this is from his pov and he doesn't really know yet, but i do imply he is going to need therapy, eventually overcome, he understands that by the end of the story, i never specify what it is john is going through, unrequited love but not actually, without tenderness we are in hell!!, writer is a loving relationship with poetry it might show at times
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2019-09-01
Packaged: 2020-09-07 19:21:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 22,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20314699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shreylock/pseuds/nostalgicshreylock
Summary: John and Mary get married.Mary, however, is not pregnant, and also not an assassin.Something else happens, and John has to learn to live with it.





	1. Now that I am awake

**Author's Note:**

  * For [agirlsname](https://archiveofourown.org/users/agirlsname/gifts).

> It's been a long time since I either read or wrote anything Johnlock related.  
I started writing this two years ago, I think, but never got around to publish it because I wanted to finish it first. A week ago I felt like I really missed them, like I never got my closure.  
So, yeah, I guess this is my last love letter to them. 
> 
> It's already finished, 22k more or less. I am going to publish a chapter every day, I think (sometimes two, since some are really short). Don't know if someone is ever going to read this, but thanks if you do!
> 
> To Lina, because if this is the last time I ever write Johnlock, I can't not gift this to you. Thank you for being such a positive presence in my life. 
> 
> (oh and no beta and not a native speaker, we die like men) 
> 
> (TW: it's not very graphic, but John sort of has a panic attack in this first chapter)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Right after the wedding, before the honeymoon.

_“I wait. Trains go by,_

_chances, looks._

_They would take me where_

_I’ve never been. But I_

_don’t want new skies._

_I want to be where I was._

_With you, to be back.”_

Pedro Salinas

_The bench is too small._

_John tries to look at it and is left with a distorted, unfocused image. His legs are shaking, struggling to remember how to get up._

_Leaves fall backwards into the sky, rain rushes up in a dazed dance as if gravity had stopped working altogether, and he finds it really hard to breathe._

_As Sherlock walks towards him, John starts crying._

_Sherlock’s gaze is stuck staring at the ground, lethargic, and when he sits by John’s side, John can feel the warmth of the other man’s arm pressed against his own._

_It occurs to him that Sherlock can’t._

_That Sherlock doesn’t exist here. That he’s not actually in John’s nightmare, that he isn’t feeling anything. That he is elsewhere, alone, untouched._

_John tries to reach him, to disappear outside of his own skin, reappear someplace else. But he can’t, can he? It’s not even worth the try._

_Disheartened, powerless, he rests his head on Sherlock’s shoulder._

_“Are you alive?” he asks, and the answer comes cold and sudden, like the first drop of rain before a storm._

_“Are you?” _

_____________

John wakes up in a cold room.

Mary’s body is all over him, and the repulsion he perceives instantly destroys whatever’s left of his will to pretend nothing has happened.

He leaves his bed with great effort, as though untangling from a trap, and the very first thing he notices is how hard it is to breathe.

It doesn’t feel like breathing so much as scraping air away from a dirty container. Nails getting stuck in his throat, only filth resurfacing through his lips.

But the pain doesn’t come with anger —he thinks as he struggles, surprised he is still able to think at all— nor disappointment: it doesn’t come with anything, really, it just takes away. It takes away hope, joy, happiness, effort. Energy.

John doesn’t want to do anything except waiting.

He clings his fingers to the fabric of the couch until his knuckles turn red, until his breath calms down, until he doesn’t feel like dying anymore.

And when even that is finally over, all he does is looking around, inertia pushing him just enough out of his brain as to acknowledge where his body is.

He discovers that he is sitting on a discoloured spot of the couch, calmly and orderly, as though he wasn’t drenched in sweat. He can’t bring himself to think anything of it.

He feels, no— is, no more than a machine blindly obeying his master’s orders, this mysterious past entity that gave him all the rules, a long time ago and just in case. (To make it comfortable, that is. To make it easy. To make sure that in a state of emergency, all he had to do was to follow).

The machine is working. It’s working almost perfectly. All of these side effects are the fault of a singular issue. This force within John, this Monster that just won’t let him go.

It had slept for so many years, concealed in John’s lungs, curled up in corners, barely surviving in an endless misery, that eventually John had thought it would never wake up. Untouchable, maybe, but ultimately unable to touch.

And yet it had become so strong and _loud_ that at a certain point John just had to start calling it alive.

Dead things can hurt, dead things can destroy, he knows that all too well, but they can’t sting like this. Dead things cannot burn. Dead things cannot shine.

If it’s invincible, it is because it feeds off of small details that John needs just as much as his monster does. Things he can’t give over.

Simple things, like smiles.

Shy looks, perhaps, or names shouted out loud while running.

Occasionally hands on shoulders. Quite often nothing more than ideas: fingers studied from afar, hopes brushed off as nightmares, tiny curls on gigantic foreheads, endless monologues and ridiculously delicate hearts.

These little details, unknown to anyone else, could colour in every wound, soften every misery John put himself through.

(Not cure, of course, never cure).

(But always help).

And the Monster— the Monster inhaled each one of those breaths, almost unnoticeably, and eventually it woke up.

It is awake now.

In a rush, in a cloud of smoke, John closes his eyes and stares at it.

John closes his eyes, stares at it— at him, and apologises to the man he can no longer pretend not to recognise, to the man he doesn’t have the courage to want to be.

“I didn’t know it could happen,” he begins, whispering, “I didn’t know something like that could ever happen. All the reasons we had not to do this, and I still— I should have. We should have let you sleep.”

The world _why_ falls from the Monster’s lips, and John doesn’t know how to answer. 


	2. I need to be sure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Right after John's wedding. Sherlock and Molly talk over texts.

_Have you ever tried talking to him?_

_Him?_

_Him, yes. Have you ever tried?_

_Why are you asking?_

_Maybe you could._

_Molly. Why are you asking?_

_Because I need to be sure that you have fought for your own happiness_

_You know, that you did everything you could._

_I am sorry to disappoint but that’s not what this is about._

_It should be, Sherlock._

_I disagree._

_Why?_


	3. I am where I need to be

The honeymoon is tightening its grip around John’s wrist.

Blood struggles to travel up to the tips of his fingers and ends up getting stuck in secret culverts.

Fear has started to follow him along, weighing on his brain from under his soles only to laugh at him when John finally bends.

John pretends not to notice this.

To his surprise, sometimes it doesn’t seem so hard.

_Mary has married a normal man_, he thinks, says to himself, like a mantra, a fairy tale, an order,_ a man who loves her and is excited and happy for their future life. I am where I need to be._

He can laugh at her jokes. He can kiss her— he can kiss every part of her, in fact, and he can take photographs that will look good in a frame. He can wake up against her naked body and smell her hair, and they will smell good, each time.

He has already done that, actually, plenty of times, and now that it _does_ seem so hard, he is astonished by his own incompetence.

Unable to shut down his mind or make it work any differently, John looks at Mary from the other side of a dinner table and thinks: _I don’t know if she deserves this._

It’s a passing thought, covered by the hundreds of reassuring advice he has carefully catalogued in his head. Hundreds of _you _can_ keep trying_, _you need this to be happy_, and _if not for anything else, do it for her, because _this_ is what she needs_, but there’s no need to be loud nor consistent to bother his precarious equilibrium.

Tips fade away. Pain stays there.

She’s so clever and sharp that he wonders if she ever sees it in him.

The manufactured smiles, the false hopes.

If she ever recognises him as this poor actor that tries and fails to make himself believable before his own eyes. 

He smiles and tries to cover the distance between his mind and his body. He takes her hand and runs his thumb over her skin.

“Thank you”, he says.

He’s not sure if he means it, if it’d be more accurate to say “sorry”, but Mary is radiant, radiant and composed, and through her reassurance everything can turn and seem true.

She moves her head a little to the left and smiles back. “Thank you, love? What for?”

His eyes rest on hers, and he has the impulse to do it all over again. To get up and pretend they just got there. Start over, start again as two like-minded friends, brave enough to speak secrets out loud.

Somehow, the image strikes him as almost too intimate.

But she’s his wife after all. She doesn’t have to be his best friend too.

“Nothing special. I- I just, I was thinking, I actually am your husband.”

“Feeling lucky?” she asks, teasingly.

John smiles again, because he doesn’t know what else to do.

She looks beautiful, objectively beautiful. The waitress walks past them and can’t help but stare at her.

Maybe she is right. Maybe John _should_ consider himself lucky, or at least proud.

Would it be normal to be proud? That’s not- he’s not really sure.

He makes an effort not to blink. It’s hard and tricky to imagine what a devoted husband would do, which sentence and small gesture would undeniably prove his love for her. He is tired of looking for an answer, a piece of evidence that will somehow assure him of the righteousness of the risk he took.

But that’s not the right expression, is it? It was not a risk. Quite the opposite.

He has only chosen the safest option. Which is to say, the right one.

Which is to say—

“It’s nice. Being here with you. Being married.”

Is he lying again? Could he even tell if he’s lying or not? Voices argue in his head. He ignores them all and focuses on Mary, clever and alive.

“Just nice?”, she says, wrinkling up his nose, exaggerating the words like a theatre actress “Not exciting? Wonderful? Heavenly, maybe?”

“Well, also all that. You know I am not very good at finding the right words.”

“Thank God you’re a writer,” she jokes, and if only she wasn’t so charming and brilliant, he would be annoyed. He would wonder if he’s not the only one who’s playing pretend. But he laughs, because she_ is _charming, and she_ is_ brilliant.

The restaurant around them is surprisingly quiet. They can see the sea through the enormous windows on every side of the room. Fancy people with fancy dresses eat expensive food, and John knows it’s only because of Mary that they can afford this.

He finds it hard to be grateful.

_God_, this would be so much easier if John could just forget.

___

Someone serves them dinner a couple of minutes later. They fade away into the mechanic of the meal. _Do you like it? _he hears himself ask.

_It’s delicious, do you want to try mine?_

The awkward silence changes dress, pretending to be a soft shade of intimacy.

After a while, Mary looks up at him.

“Have you heard anything from Sherlock?”

The question is phrased as an attempt to start a casual conversation, but it tastes like bitterness. John remains freeze, unable to answer.

_That’s not how I had imagined my marriage_, he thinks, wordlessly.

_I had never, not even once, pictured this much stillness._

“Actually, no,” he answers, trying his best to mimic Mary’s tone.

“Have any idea why?”

Mary furrows her brows and takes a sip of wine, and John’s mouth has run out of words. Syllables made out of woods try to get through the hell gates of his throat and fail— try to get through the burning and are unable to make it out alive.

Not a single, tangible proof of their once-existence survives in any form that isn’t dust.

“I don’t know,” he says, eyes almost closed, “he is probably working on a case.”

“Have you tried calling him?”

_Yes, Mary, I have, of course._

He could say that. It’d be plausible. Almost true. Who knows if Sherlock would answer if he tried to call him.

But then, again, it’s not like he can put the blame on Sherlock. He doesn’t want to, he couldn’t bear it.

“Maybe tomorrow,” he whispers, knowing neither of them will believe him.

There’s a love song in the background, and three couples are dancing in the middle of the room. John abruptly gets up and offers Mary a hand. “Let’s think about something else, shall we?”

She looks confused. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, of course.”

They dance away the night, in silence and deep breaths.

At some point during that tiring celebration, he realises that their life together has so far been a collection of short sentences. 

_I love you_, he says in his mind, purposely with Mary’s voice, and it sounds meaningless.


	4. doing what I think it's best

When Sherlock was dead, John used to write him messages.

Sometimes it was on a bathroom’s wall, sometimes on the back of a bus ticket, others on the bottom of a wine bottle. John used to trace each letter with his fingers, lightly, but the most important part of the ritual —he knew— came right after, when the letters would disappear, when dust would forget to have been set aside, and the air would push away any leftover of their existence.

It was the very feeling of losing them that became addictive— the want and the endless wait for resurrection, for the moment he would make the mistake to give them life just once more.

He is about to open the door, and a polite, fake smile is already scratched on his face, when he suddenly remembers one of them.

Mrs. Hudson’s figure, standing outside his house, waits patiently, as those long lost ghosts whisper, without pity or fear:_ I wonder if Mrs. Hudson saw._

John had made sure to wipe them out. And they _had_, because when he first met her after Sherlock’s funeral— damnit, when he first met _Sherlock_ after Sherlock’s funeral, they simply were not there.

They had been gone for years and years, and now here they reappear, like a terrible joke, unraveling an unbearable secret. 

John closes his eyes.

_Three months after his death, he got drunk in a pub and- whose? Whose death, John?_

Mary is coming down the stairs and he can hear her telling him to let his ex-landlady in.

He does. Very hardly. He has to.

“Oh John, how nice it is to see you”, she says as he approaches, and he feels himself moving, kissing her cheek, answering her questions. Apologising for not returning her calls sooner.

“Never mind dear, I didn’t mean to bother you and your lovely wife. I just wanted to check how you were doing. And I probably have to thank Mary for this invitation anyway,” she replies, smiling and walking in Mary’s direction.

They hug, idly make small talk, and all the while John stares ad Mrs. Hudson’s hair, tryingto deduce whether Sherlock has told her anything.

He quietly begs her not to mention him, not to even say his name, even while knowing that he desperately wants her to say something. Anything that can remind him that Sherlock is still a living person carrying on with his own life.

From the very moment Mary had told him she had invited her over, he has been trying to convince himself that he could face her. That he could make it work.

But he can’t. Jesus, he can’t.

He wants Mrs. Hudson to leave, he wants Mary to leave, he wants everyone to leave him alone, to let him scream in a small room and go over the shape of his scars, silently, not saving a spot of skin for anyone to see.

_But John_, Sherlock says, suddenly, from a corner of his mind, _whose scars? _

He is honest to god about to leave, go anywhere he can avoid being seen and vomit everything he has not eaten, but Mary’s phone starts ringing when John’s feet start moving backwards.

“I’ve really got to take this, I’ll be right back,” she says, and answers the phone while heading into the kitchen, a hint of nervousness in the tone of her voice.

Now that Mary has left the room, Mrs. Hudson instantly changes expression, though she doesn’t say a word.

She has never done that, John notices. Not even in the worst moments, not even when it would have been best to shut up— she had always said something. Why not now, then?

Maybe it’s his fault. His Monster’s fault. Making everyone tired, uncomfortable.

He wishes he could disappear.

No, not quite.

He wishes he could vanish.

Disappear has a tricky meaning. What disappears from your hands, reappears in the curve of your neck. And you try to make it go away from there too, but it doesn’t. It just moves. One day you wake up and you can’t even locate it anymore, but you know it’s still there because you can feel it aching.

That’s how it felt, grieving Sherlock. That’s how it feels.

You attempt to cover it, you leave other marks on your bones, you pretend it doesn’t exist anymore, you put it somewhere worthless, forgotten and forsaken, but it doesn’t vanish, it never vanishes.

Not even Sherlock himself, breathing and alive, could put an end to its existence.

John doesn’t want to look into Mrs. Hudson’s eyes, so he doesn’t.

A few moments go by, and then she takes a step closer, smiling —John can’t see this, but she does, deeply, fondly, and it is a smile full of sadness.

She puts a hand on John’s shoulder and he remains still.

“When I was younger,” she starts, gently, “I had a best friend. Her name was Margaret. She was funny, witty. Remarkably stubborn, too. She got mad at everything and we used to fight once a day at the very least.”

“When she was seventeen, however,” she continues, as though John was not even there, and she was telling the story to no one in particular, “something happened. I will not say what, but it went on for years, long after it was over. And then one day, out of the blue, she froze, she just— froze, right in front of me, and said: I need to stop denying myself the things I need. I didn’t think much of it at the time, I was mostly sad because I knew that she was leaving and there was nothing I could do to stop her.”

“But now, now I think I know what she meant. And I think that _I_ was the fool, for staying and not even asking her if I could follow her.”

John stares at her and he’s waiting for her to say “Sherlock”. Bracing himself for it, even, though part of him knows the words will never come.

“Did you come here just to tell me this cryptic story?” he asks, eventually, his voice a little unsure, and wishes he could stay there. Safe inside the stories of an old lady that has seen a whole other world. A world that he fools himself into thinking might be so far away from his, that it could never ever hurt.

Mrs. Hudson smiles. “Oh, John, maybe that’s a little reductive.”

When the sound of Mary’s voice, worried but calm, fades away from the background, Mrs. Hudson promptly steps away from John.

She adjusts her hair, turns once again into a polite, unassuming old lady.

To John’s eyes, she looks like she’s on a mission. He can’t tell if that scares him or calms him down.

Soon enough, Mary comes back, and they all end up sitting on the kitchen table, drinking tea and playing the part like three mediocre actors (out of which, he suspects, Mrs. Hudson might be the most talented).

Mary, he notices, is constantly on edge. She has been since their honeymoon. John tried not to acknowledge it, at first, not even to himself, but then it became just undeniable.

At times, maybe, she might have wanted to stop, to let her guard fall, but she couldn’t, not ever. She _has_ to deliver all the right lines, and all in the perfect order, or he could very easily slip away from her fingers, and then it would be much more painful to start all over again.

Sometimes John is convinced that they both know this, and that’s why it’s still so incredibly hard.

This excessive, almost obsessive care, however, is equally as difficult to perform as it is easy to forget, and maybe that’s the entire point. He can’t regret things he doesn’t remember.

Mary’s phone buzzes every two seconds, and John’s mind, if nothing else, keeps coming back to that distraction.

_Please_, he reads on the screen, _I really need your help, I’m not joking._

“Mary,” he interrupts after an alarming number of pleads lit up the screen, “are you sure that is not important?”

“Not, it’s not,” she says, clearly annoyed, “it’s just-it’s David.”

“You know I’m not jealous, right? If you think it’s important, you can go.”

“Of course you are not jealous,” she replies, bitter, and her voice is so low that it’s almost inaudible. “But I’m not leaving when we have guests.”

“Well, maybe you should,” Mrs. Hudson says, “I’d very much like to spend a little bit of alone time with my boy, since I see him so rarely.”

John smiles at the words _my boy_. It feels like watching another man’s life through a window.

Mary is unsure, and the phone rings in her hand again as she rises from her seat.

“I’m afraid I’ll have to leave, then.”

She kisses Mrs. Hudson on the cheek, brusquely, and then John on the mouth, and he thinks that they’re lucky at least she knows how to keep up appearances.

“I’m gonna see you again soon, right?”, she asks politely before turning her back and hurrying up to the door, and Mrs. Hudson doesn’t even bother answering. Or maybe she does, and John is just too tired to catch it.

Point is: Mary leaves, and suddenly they are alone.

John finds it hard to focus, to think, or to say anything at all.

He opens his mouth to at least try to say something, but, before he gets the chance, Mrs. Hudson gets up and throws the tea Mary has made in the sink.

“You don’t mind, do you?” she says and starts moving around the kitchen as if it was her own.

A couple of minutes later a new cup of tea is made.

He takes a sip, and the taste of it reminds him of home.

Abruptly, without any kind of introduction, she looks at him and frowns.

“John, forgive my honesty, but how have you become so lifeless?”

“I’m fine,” he says, automatically, and he knows he _sounds _lifeless, but there’s not much he can do about that.

“What is it, John?” she asks, evidently concerned, “What scares you so much?”

John thinks about the blood. Sherlock’s death, his head on the floor. The absolute fear that demolished his lungs. Voices in his head whispering _no matter what you do, how much you beg, he can never come back_ and his Monster screaming in silences, ripping apart the walls of his cage, desperately, trying-_ needing_ to get out, not caring if the process would kill John and the Monster itself along with him.

John had locked him in. Carefully, meticulously. Brutally.

If he is afraid of anything, he is afraid of what he is capable of.

“I don’t know,” he says, out loud.

“John, I don't want to intrude here, but what I can tell you is that the first time I saw you, you were in better shape than you are now.”

John’s eyes stare at the ground. She takes his hand, a small hesitation before she squeezes. “You shouldn’t be scared of you are, you know.”

“I am not,”he says, surprised to have been found out. Unsure if he has actually been found out— if she has phrased it better than he has.

His voice is beginning to sound broken. He can’t let himself bend any more than this, he knows damn well he can’t, and yet he does.

And yet he asks.

“Has he- has he asked you to tell me anything?”

“Honestly, John, do you really think he ever would?”

His whole body shivers and suddenly he tries not to listen, not to acknowledge, pay attention or understand, because he can’t take it, not now, not when his excuses feel so incredibly thin, not when his cage is so tangible. Not_ here- not. Please. Don’t._

“John,” she insists.

“How did you find out?”, he says, and it’s a whisper inside his throat.

“I didn’t. I never had to.”

She rises from her chair and her lips can’t help but curve up. It’s a beautiful story after all.

Yes, it’s sad. Devastating, even. But undeniably beautiful, too.

“Look at you. Am I really supposed not to see it?”

_Of course I know who the killer is, John. Didn’t you see his eyes when I asked him about the murder? That was the face of a man who doesn’t want to know the truth, who’d rather let the world think he is blind than admit his wife is the one who’s doing it._

_Why? Oh, there are many reasons why a man would want to live a lie. Shame. Fear. Possibly both._

“Please, John, say something.”

_I don’t think he has many options. He is going to want to disappear from this city. This country, even. Too many people are involved, he doesn’t have the tools to convince himself he never noticed. _

_But then, again, you are a better judge of human nature. What I know is that he will much likely attempt to play pretend, and I won’t let him._

_Well, John, it’s obviously his fault, too. He freely decided not to move a finger in order to stop this slaughter._

“John?”

_Fuck. Fuck. Fuck._

“I’m doing what I think is best.”

“Oh, dear, and what do you think that means?”

John starts speaking and not even a word in, he immediately starts over, magically teleported in some other place like a ghost lost in the shadows.

“Does Mary love me?” he asks, and instantly, _instantly_, Mrs. Hudson’s eyes say no. In less than a second, they betray everything she’s desperately trying to hold back.

“Does it really matter?” she replies anyway.

So, she _was_ on a mission. She still is.

“Mrs. Hudson,” John says, suddenly, curiosity taking over his mind, “did you arrange this meeting so that Mary could leave us alone?”

“Well,” she starts, then pauses, and for a moment she is just Mrs. Hudson, and he is just John. “You have to admit it, David is very easily impressionable.”

Surprised, John laughs, and can’t believe his own small, fragile kind of joy, unique and forsaken in his maze of wounds.

“Please tell me you didn’t threaten him.”

She laughs with him. “Even if I did, I don’t think it would have been the first time.”

“God, this is gonna get out of hand.”

And so efficiently do they fade away into the abnormal familiarity of that dialogue, that John turns around on impulse, looking for something he doesn’t find.

It takes him a second to understand what his body is trying to do.

And of course. He’s looking for Sherlock.

Like he does every time he is confused or amused by a witness’ answers, like he does every time a piece of evidence unravels and they have to pick a move, like he does every time he needs to. Which is— all the time.

He’s always looking for Sherlock.

His voice gets out without asking for permission, and his fingers tighten around his wrist. “What am I doing?”

Mrs. Hudson lets out a breath. Looks at him, kind and compassionate.

“I’m really glad you asked,” she says, and, for a while —maybe even for the rest of the afternoon, until Mrs. Hudson gets up to clean the cups and even eventually hugs him and says goodbye— they stay like this.

Looking at each other, not a single word left to say.

Motionless.

_________

When she closes the door, Sherlock is still laying on the couch. 

Mrs. Hudson suspects he might have neglected to move for the entirety of the past six hours.

She can feel him trying to deduce her, inquiring eyes staring at her face, and she is waiting for a word, or maybe a sarcastic comment— anything at all, really. But he doesn’t speak.

At last, when she has long lost hope, and the groceries are orderly sorted into whatever drawer is not filled with weird chemicals and dubious body parts, Mrs. Hudson hears him whispering. She stops, and he says it louder. For her. For him.

For John.

“I don’t regret falling in love with him.”

It sounds like a deduction, an ultimate proof that cannot be swept aside, and, more than anything else, it sounds meaningful.

Painfully, fully, marvellously meaningful.


	5. Fear

_Three months after Sherlock’s death, he got drunk in a pub and tried to forget._

_At two in the morning, a man and a woman came in._

_She was screaming. He was crying._

_They looked so in love and so _afraid _that witnessing their fight was honest to god painful. _

_They weren’t actually talking, they were just throwing words at each other, crafting elaborate accuses for crimes that neither of them was responsible for. _

_John wouldn't dare to guess whether or not they were together, but, in all fairness, he doubted they ever had the guts to say out loud the sentences they needed to say in order to even consider getting there._

_ _

_As he felt them fighting, furiously and desperately, he started drawing shapes under his glass of beer. Letters._

_Slowly, one after another._

_At once, he let out a breath._

I wonder

if Mrs. Hudson

saw.


	6. love

Sherlock doesn’t want to get in. He could, he should, and he’s supposed to, but he won’t.

Sat on the first step of his front door, he is wearing one of his best suits and staring at nothing. 

It’s almost midnight.

As rain taps on his head and drunk pedestrians laugh their way out of sorrow, all he can think about is music. 

He holds his hands upright, playing an imaginary violin, trying to give substance to ideas he cannot speak nor write down, not even in the deepest chambers of his mind palace. 

For the first time in Sherlock’s life, his inability to fully access his thoughts fascinates him just as much as it terrifies him.

More so, the fear is starting to fade, and pain— pain is taking its place. 

Sherlock only fears the unknown, and the unknown is over by now. He has crossed that land.

Everything he is gonna have to face from this moment on is compressed into a sea of fire above the inside of his lungs. He is waiting for it to explode, to cross the lines of his consciousness, so that when all hope is lost, he will finally breathe it out. 

And god, he is going to see it all. The flames erupting from below his upper lip, the smoke clearing away slowly, leaving behind the faint scent of the particles it was made of. His own skin freezing as water turns into ice. 

When his brain is back in full force, when his heart is out of the way, only then he will examine the pain. Try to rationalise it.

Perhaps even move forward (though, to be frank, his hopes are rarely that high). 

Until that moment comes, however, he’s going to survive as best as he can, and all he has got for now —along with his music— is the pale figure of an incompetent taxi driver, monologuing in front of him. 

That’s not nearly enough, but it will have to be. 

_The murder_, the man stars, and immediately pauses for emphasis, just like an actor in a theatre, _happened, Mr. Holmes, part of you died there. The loss is undeniable. There is no reasonable argument to make against the case in itself._

_However— this doesn't mean that though part of you died, _you_ can't be alive. Your heart, Mr. Holmes, is still beating. _

_And why is that?_

_You told me that love is a vicious motivator, but it's not. It’s not a motivator. It’s an instigator. A consultive criminal for ghosts. _

_And _that_ is what's keeping you alive. _

“Is it, really?" Sherlock asks, quietly, seemingly bored. 

Eyes closed, arms still playing. 

_Is it what? _

"A consultive criminal for ghosts.”

_How would else you define it, Mr. Holmes? _

“People say it’s fulfilling.” 

The taxi-driver grins. _Is it, really? _

A smiling John Watson, dressed in one of his best jumpers, abruptly takes the serial killer’s place.

A little too early for a departure, but this time Sherlock doesn’t mind. 

_Love is not supposed to be fulfilling_, he says, and his voice is almost identical to the real one. 

Sherlock stops playing, curios. “It’s not?”

_Love is not supposed to fill your empty spaces. Or give you all the answers. No, Sherlock, that’s not it. What love does is covering everything else. Like rain. _

He opens his right hand, and drops of rain from the world of the living wet his skin. 

_When it's true and healthy, the water is clean. Transparent. If you tried, you could see right through it._

_Most of the times, however, you will only want to feel it. _

_And— It won’t change your shape, it will only give you one more layer. _

_What happens is that it rains for days, Sherlock, until the water feels so warm that you can't help but open all the windows and let it in, let it all in. Into your home. _

"And then I'm stuck with it."

_And then you are stuck with it. _

“Can I throw it out?” 

_No you can’t throw it out, it doesn’t work that way. _

_ The best you can do is trying to make it dry. Just wait for it to… I don’t know, evaporate. _

_But even when that is done, you will not find a way to erase its trace, no matter how hard you try. The pages will dry, and you will still be able to clearly tell them apart from those that were never touched by the water. _

“What if I leave the room?” 

_Sherlock, you can’t. It’s your body. Your skin. _

“How do I get it off my skin then? Don’t you have towels in this metaphorical universe of yours?” 

Mrs. Hudson, right at that moment, opens one of the windows from the inside of Baker Street. She is holding a lid pot above her head to protect herself from the rain, and she looks exceptionally concerned. 

“Sherlock, dear, I don’t know who you are talking to, but I can tell you that we for sure have towels if you want to come up here.” 

“Thank you Mrs. Hudson, but I am perfectly fine and I don’t need anything whatsoever. Your advice is greatly appreciated but now please have a good night and leave me alone.” 

He doesn’t want to know her answer, so his gaze just comes back to John’s. He blocks out everything else.

After a couple of minutes, he hears the windows closing. 

“John,” he says then, “this not realistic. You would _never _say that. You do believe that love is meant to be fulfilling, that’s exactly what you are trying to do with Mary.”

_And you think that’s working? _

“It doesn’t matter what I think. For as much as I—”

Sherlock shuts his eyes as if it was painful to talk. Because, well. It is. 

“For as much as I.” 

_You still can’t say it, can you? _

“No, I can’t. I really can’t. Happy now? I can’t.” 

_But you did say that. To Mrs. Hudson. _

_You told her you are in love with me. _

“Yes, I did. But I spent several hours preparing myself for that moment.”

_Okay, and what else have you been doing tonight? _

Sherlock sighs. Takes a deep breath.

“For as much as I love you, I do not get to decide what course your life should take.” 

_So what you are trying to say is that when I chose her over you, I made a decision you shouldn’t disrespect?_

“She’s not relevant to the point. You didn’t choose her over me, you simply did not choose me.” 

_Except she is, Sherlock. She is extremely relevant. _

“No, she is not.” 

_Yes, she is. Would you be in so much pain if it wasn’t for Mary? _

Sherlock stays silent. The rain gets louder, more violent. Less gentle. 

_You must be honest. At least with yourself, Sherlock. Be honest. _

_Well, what else is there to do? _Sherlock thinks, in his own voice, and starts talking.

“I don’t know what it’s worse, John. That she makes you happy or that she doesn’t.

That you didn’t choose me because you love her more, or that you so don’t love me that even if you don’t love her either, she is preferable.”

“I am aware it’s much more complicated than this, I really am. But it doesn’t _feel _complicated. You are someone else with her. I don’t recognise you when you are together.

I try to, I make the effort, but you are not _you_. Sometimes I think the last time I ever saw you was before the fall.”

“What annoys me is that the most painful thing might just be the ease with which you have let her into your life. And, John, this does not even have anything to do with me not trusting your relationship with Mary. Regardless of who she is and how she makes you feel, I find it unbearable to look at the two of you doing something as simple as holding hands. It hurts in such a clear, simple way, that I get almost stuck into the feeling.” 

“I could never, ever do that. I never properly hugged you. Not once. I find the idea hysterical. I never hugged you.”

“You just told me that you can’t throw away love, but I am pretty sure I can, eventually. I could have done so much more to avoid the pain I am feeling right now. There are about a thousand safety measures that I refused to even consider, and I think the problem is that I don’t want to get rid of this.”

“I am sitting here, carelessly getting myself drenched, specifically because I don’t want to lose this. There isn’t anything clever to say except that I want something I can’t have, and it hurts, and I don’t want it to stop hurting.”

John turns his head to look at him, and for a moment Sherlock can almost believe he’s the real one.

_Do you hate him? _

“Do I hate John? Have you been paying attention to any of the words I have just said?” 

_Do you hate me? _

“Who’s you? Me, Sherlock Holmes? Of course I hate myself, next question?” 

_Why? _

“I shouldn’t have jumped.” 

_You really had to. _

“I should have told him, then. I should have realised just how much he would be affected by my loss. And most of all, if I claim to be a genius, I should have known he wouldn’t choose me.”

_Why?_

“People choose Sherlock Holmes exclusively if it convenient. Look at me, whispering to myself under a storm. My brother is seven out of ten trying to listen to this monologue through some kind of bug, and I’m so sleep deprived that I can’t even find the energy to care. I’d rather piss him off by giving him all the answers before he formulates the questions than actually deal with him anyway.” 

_If you already sorted it all out, why am I here?_

Sherlock smiles, and even if he _were_ crying, it’s raining so hard that he wouldn’t notice. 

“Because I miss you.” 

_But I’m still here, Sherlock. I’m not dead. _

“But you are not here for me. You are not the version of John Watson who chose me. And I can’t ask you to change.” 

_Why? _

“Because I’m the version of Sherlock Holmes who loves you. The original one, I believe, the only one I can honestly classify as truthful.” 

_Why are you suddenly so comfortable? How can you suddenly talk about it so freely? _

“Because I am tired.” 

_Of what? _

“Of being ashamed of myself because I dared to fall in love with you. Love may not be an advantage, but it’s fascinating.”

“Do you know what I did when Mrs. Hudson left Baker Street to visit your house? I recreated in my mind every case I have ever solved that was in some ways connected to Moriarty, and I realised that with you on the table, defeating him has been immensely complicated, but without you? Surviving would have been impossible. I would have died on day one, intoxicated by that damn pill.” 

“Falling in love with you saved me, and if I am honest with myself, it’s not killing me now. I am afraid it was worth it.” 

John smiles at him, nothing left to add, and when he, too, eventually fades away, Sherlock is alone in the darknesses. 

He picks up his imaginary violin, and after a small, heavy hesitation, he starts playing again. 

One of the five drunk men that have walked past him that night finds his way back to Baker Street, and when he lays his blurry eyes on him for the second time, he hurries to his pocket, grabs a yellow sweet, and throws it at him. 

“Three cheers for your dedication. Lucky are your friends.” 

When the man has eventually walked away, Sherlock opens it. There’s a message inside it. 

_I am sorry, brother of mine. _

Sherlock stares at the words until the rain wipes them all away.

Eventually, he eats the candy. 

It might have gone off, or worse be poisonous, but at least he can still feel the sugar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know that technically John and Sherlock /did/ hug at John's wedding, but I am not sure Sherlock would classify it as a proper hug, one he consciously chose and actually lived through, fully and freely. So that's why I didn't mention it.  
Anyway, thanks for reading!


	7. not the same thing

The streets of London are almost empty.

John walks slowly, counting each step until he gets to one hundred. Then he stops and closes his eyes as rain washes him over.

He waits thirty seconds, and then starts again.

He’s trying to prove a point. To himself, mostly.

It’s not working well.

Every inch of his city, and especially _that_ part of it, so dangerously close to Baker Street, reminds him of Sherlock. Which was exactly what he was supposed to discredit, and the very reason he got out of bed at three in the morning in the first place.

_I’m not looking for him_, he had typed in his computer on a blog draft, like a sleep-walker or a ghost.

Mary asleep in their bedroom, his Monster very much awake on a cold couch. Again.

_I’m not looking for him. It’s not the same thing, without him, but it’s not a bad thing— the one I have, chose. I can be fine even if I can’t look at him to make sure that I actually am._

When he was younger, he used to write differently, more openly. He would even write poetry, sometimes. Whenever he couldn’t sleep.

He was ashamed of it, back then, and truthfully he is ashamed of it now, too. Now that he has started doing it again because apparently every other option is unavailable.

John doesn’t even have the guts to reread the drafts. On the contrary, he writes in order to forget his feelings. It does not work. Not at all.

Especially tonight, his words had seemed too much. Almost like an admission. A secret he couldn’t bring himself to acknowledge.

Too many _him _falling from his lips: a billion bullets crashing on a mirror.

There’s a homeless man sleeping on the side of the street. He has curly hairs.

For a moment, John wonders what he would do if he found Sherlock in such poor conditions. What he’d say.

Probably just his name.

Over and over again. First time out loud, and then silently, to himself.

He can’t do it. He just can’t avoid thinking about him.

Maybe he needs to properly let go. But how?

Letting go of Sherlock Holmes. 

Such a ridiculous concept.

_You beat me here, my Monster._

He breathes in, the air like fire inside his lungs.

_Today, and today only, I choose to remember._

________________

“What was that? Why- Why aren’t we running anymore?”

“The shoes. I checked his shoes.”

“And?”

“And nothing, that’s all I needed to do, check his shoes.”

“His _shoes_?”

“Yes, his shoes. Have you been listening to me? I have talked about his shoes for days.”   
  
“No, you haven’t. First you have rambled about the lady’s dog, and then you focused on her gloves.”

“Yes, John, that was also relevant to the murder, but it all pointed back to her son’s shoes.”

“You haven’t said that out loud, I can assure you.”

“Well, we have to work on that.”

“On what?”

“My communication skill.”

“Definitely on the to-do list.”

“Oh, and while we are on the subject, I should probably text Lestrade. Tell him to arrest the step-mother, if she is still in England.”

“The step-mother? Okay, you have definitely lost me here. I think I deserve a long explanation for this one.”

“Why, you think you have done something special?”

“I ran around London with you for what? Five hours? All without a single complaint.”

“Isn’t that just the usual?”

“Yes. But on the other hand, I always deserve a long explanation.”

“It’s my pleasure.”

_I’m just glad to know you always want one._

_Yeah, I know._

________________

Comfort.

_I’m here_: a few words spoken in a shivering look.

Fragile smiles shared in a living room, the wandering of deep, sleepless eyes over shoulders and cheekbones.

Making dinner together. In silence.

Everything that could still be floating in the small space between their hands.

Fearless moves: shoulders briefly pressed together. Skin on skin. The movie keeps rolling and they lose track of the plot. 

________________

_“_What do you mean we can’t come back home?”

“I didn’t say that. We can and it wouldn't be dangerous, but the smell could be slightly unsettling.”

“Can you be a little more specific?” 

“It could cause nausea.”

“Could?”

“It’s very likely for us to vomit after experiencing it from a close distance.”

“You said you wouldn’t consider it dangerous.”

“It’s not dangerous, it’s _unsettling._”

“What about Mrs. Hudson?”

“She is at Mrs. Turner’s.”

“Where did you think we were going to sleep tonight?”

“I might have overestimated this case. Thought we wouldn’t have to come back beforemorning.”

“So by then the smell will be gone?”

“Mostly gone.”

“Was it at least urgent?”

“What, the experiment? Depends on your definition of urgent.”

“Is it a life or death matter?”

“Well, everything is. You could cross the street right now and get hit by a—“

“Sherlock.”

“John?”

“Just shut up.”

“But you asked me a question.”

“Oh, my bad, I forgot it’s always my fault.”

“Not to be off-topic, I believe that is just another thing you tell yourself.”

“So it’s not only my fault? I should start recording these statements.”

“You are never the only one responsible. It is impossible to safely blame one individual for a complication that might have been impacted by the actions of many.”

“No, I mean it, I should get a recorder.”

“You have one on your phone.”

“Yes, I know, I said that for emphasis.”

“Oh.”

“So, how do you plan to spend the night?”

“You do not intend to go back home?”

“I do not intend to vomit, no.”

“Understandable.”

“But do not get me wrong, I’m still angry. You are gonna have to make it up to me.”

“Oh, am I?”

“Definitely. Stop grinning, I am serious.”

“Fine, I’ll buy you dinner.”

“And after that?”

“What?”

“Do you catch up? We can’t go home.”

“Oh, right, yes. Well, the choices are various. We can try to get ourselves incarcerated and then sleep in imprison.”

“I imagine that wouldn’t be too hard. Still, maybe not the best course of action.”

“I have spent several hours of my teenage years trying to find different ways to rob other people’s houses without getting caught, and it’s overall easy. I’ve eyed three interesting flats near this area.” 

“I’m not robbing anyone.”

“We wouldn’t steal anything, I’d just impress you with my deductions.”

“We are not committing a crime _and_ violating people’s privacy just so that you can impress me.”

“Well, to be fair I can impress you in about a hundred other ways, the robbery would be mostly done for my entertainment.”

“Are you really that awake?”

“Always.”

“Let’s just keep walking. We’ll grab some food on the way.”

“Walking where?”

“Anywhere, doesn’t really matter. I can’t think of any bed I could sleep on. I’m not waking up Lestrade, and I’m not gonna bother Molly either.”

“I would. But I don’t want to.”

“Why?”

“I enjoy walking. Plus, maybe I can get us a case. If I look hard enough.”

“Please don’t. Had enough of that today.”

_But you haven’t had enough of me, have you?_

_Shut up._

________________

Excitement.

Hunger, hunger for more, hunger for those moments of fear wrapped up in sparks of happiness. _I can’t die with you. I would come back just to run a little further, just to smile back after it’s all over, just to shout “we are almost there” and meet your gaze halfway through._

The terrifying knowledge that you both want that, you both want to risk it.

Those hundreds of moments in which you do.

In which you risk it.

The lighting that comes right after.

________________

“You almost died.”

“Yes. What about it?”

“Just, try not to.”

“Why?”

“I like Baker Street, and I wouldn’t really be able to find another flatmate.”

“Mrs. Hudson would lower your rent.”

“Why didn’t she lower yours?”

_Because I never asked her to._

_I’m glad you didn’t._

________________

Bareness.

Tears streaming down too quickly. Smiles arose just to stop them, right in their track.

Sleeping in the same house, fading in the same dream.

Not feeling the need to be distant. To run away backwards.

_And when you do I ask myself why, and I do not sleep._

_Sometimes I see you naked in the darkness, reaching out for me in the shadows._

________________

“You almost died.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I did.”

“I have to find a way to avoid that particular scenario.”

“I think you’ll find out soon enough that you can’t do much to protect me from danger.”

“You underestimate me, John.”

“I never do.”

_Yes, you do. I promise, you won’t die. _

_What if it’s not my death the one I care about the most?_

________________

Trust.

A gun pointed to your head: trust, infinite trust.

Not in a hundred years I’ll believe you would pull the trigger.

_I’ve known you since the start._

_I’ve believed you since the beginning._

_Even when I shouldn’t have, even when I wasn’t supposed to._

_One hundred percent._

Disillusion all at once, right from underneath your hopes. 

Trust nevertheless.

_Because I do not trust that you are doing it right. I trust that you are trying to._

________________

Progress.

Wanting to do better, wanting to do more. Forgetting the cane.

Forgetting my closure. Losing the key in your coat.

_I don’t mind._

__________________

“I need to get ice cream.”

“What did you just say?”

“I need ice cream.”

“I’m sorry, I think you’ll have to repeat that.”

“It’s for the case!”

“What do you need it for?”

“We are going to make a scene in Hayley’s shop."

“Why?”

“We are looking for cats.”

“Cats?”  
  
“Do not look so clueless.”

“I _am_ clueless.”

“Well, yes, mostly, you are. But you really can do better than this.”

“Cats as in…. Oh! Catwoman! The comics!”

“Exactly.”

“I don’t want to disappoint but I still don’t get how any of that has to do with the murder.”

“Didn’t expect you to. You will understand as we proceed.”

“Are you really gonna eat that ice cream eventually?”

“I don’t generally like wasting my money.”

“I haven’t had ice cream in ages. Are you willing to share it?”

“Is that a serious question?”

“Yes, I suppose.”

“Can I trust you to be credible? If so you can have the ice cream in the first place.”

“But I want you to eat it.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s funny.”

“Why on earth is the idea of me eating ice cream funny?”

“I don’t know, it just is.”

“I have had plenty of ice creams as a child.”

“I’m sorry, are you getting defensive?”

“I just don’t understand your humor.”

“You don’t understand humor as a general concept.”

“That’s simply not true, I do make jokes.”

“Not as much as an average human being.”

“I haven’t made any research on the matter, but I feel like you’re not being accurate.”

“Sherlock, I’m just mocking you. You are actually quite funny.”

“Am I really?”

“I don’t know, will you buy that damn ice-cream?”

“Oh for god’s sake.”

“Are you?”

“Stop giggling.”

“You are not entitled to say that, you are laughing, too!”

“After a long analysis, I have come to realise that I might profoundly dislike you.”

“You are a bit late for that.”

“I tend to do that, yes.”

__________________

Fear. 

That it might go wrong. That it might won’t happen.

Death wishes formulated all too seriously.

Dangerous nights. Nightmares.

And hope.

That il will all go right.

That maybe, just maybe, they only need to stay close, and not look away. 

__________________

“Hello?”

“John.”

“Hey, Sherlock, you okay?”

“Turn around and walk back the way you came now.”

“No, I’m coming in.”

“Just do as I ask. Please.”

“Where?”

“Stop there.”

“Sherlock?”

“Okay, look up. I’m on the rooftop.”

“Oh God.”

“I-I can’t come down, so we’ll. We’ll just have to do it like this.”

“What’s going on?”

“An apology. It’s all true.”

“What?”

“Everything they said about me. I invented Moriarty.”

“Why are you saying this?”

“I’m a fake.”

“Sherlock.”

“The newspapers were right all along. I want you to tell Lestrade. I want you to tell Mrs. Hudson, and Molly. In fact, tell anyone who will listen to you that I created Moriarty for my own purposes.”

“Okay, shut up, Sherlock, shut up. The first time we met. The first time we met, you knew all about my sister, right?”

“Nobody could be that clever.”

“You could.”

“I researched you. Before we met I discovered everything that I could to impress you. It’s a trick. Just a magic trick.”

“No. All right, stop it now.”

“No, stay exactly where you are. Don’t move.”

“All right.”

“Keep your eyes fixed on me. Please, will you do this for me?”

“Do what?”

“This phone call. It’s, it’s my note. It’s what people do, don’t they– leave a note?

“Leave a note when?”

“Goodbye, John.”

“No. Don’t. No. SHERLOCK!”

__________________

Pain.

Profound and devastating. Constantly and all over.

All the steps John could not take. All the words he had not said.

Stretching out an arm in the middle of the night, pretending to find a body. Pretending to find a man. Feeling so ashamed. Feeling trapped. Always a few inches away, always closed up in a cage.

Picking up a phone call and hearing the person you love most writing a suicide note in the air under his feet. To you. For you.

Not knowing how to stop it.

Screaming. Wanting to rip your cage apart.

_You were alive just yesterday. You were breathing. Thinking. You were growing old, you were with me. I could call you yesterday. I could have hugged you yesterday. I could have told you you are not a machine, you are not a hero, you are Sherlock.  
But from now on you won’t be here. I’ve lost you._

_I have lost your eyes, I have lost your jokes, I have lost your brain, your heart, I have lost all your tears. I have lost the way you say my name. I have lost the ridiculous complaints you made when you were bored. I have lost your screams, your flaws, your incredible complexity. I have lost my best friend, my companion, my.   
I have lost you._

_ __________________ _

_I was always so afraid you’d leave without me._

__________________

Miracles.

Miracles you can’t pretend to have stopped praying for. Miracles you have wanted for so long, and now are exploding in your face like fireworks. Leaving you deaf.

Wanting to kiss someone and beat him up at the same time. So much rage. So much rage out of so much love and shame and fear and here it is by some miracle here it is all this time that I waited I have never really cried I have always only failed and now that I have this back what do I do how do I live how can I even dare to think I can start living again.

Knowing the miracle will stop working if you refuse to speak. Knowing it’ll stop shining. It’ll stop being yours.

_But if I speak. I have to tell him. I have to tell myself why. And when. And what exactly, and h_ _ow many years, how many dreams, how many shameful nightmares. _

_And I don’t want to._

__________________

“It takes John Watson to save your life. Trust me on that, I should know. He's saved mine so many times, and in so many ways.”

_Oh god, Sherlock, if only I could save mine._

_ __________________ _

Love.

Underneath it all.

Above all else.

Conquering kingdoms, killing kings, finding its way through.

The Monster and his crown. Lullabies.

Shooting stars.

_______________

When John opens his eyes, Baker Street is sleeping only a few feet away from his body.

He stares at the house while the storm rages from above his hands.

The door is closed. Obviously.

Unable to stop himself, he gets closer and puts his fingers on the handle.

_I wonder, _he starts writing with his thumb, gently, _if you ever saw._

_If you’ll ever know._

There’s a candy wrapper just beside his right shoes, and a short note crumpled around it.

John doesn’t pick it up. John doesn’t knock, and he doesn’t leave a message.

He steps back.

And says, out loud:

“I miss you.”


	8. I only see it now

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> days later

A fist of sorrow sits on the edge of nothing.

John’s eyes shut down. Wishing it over.

Wishing it far, far away, back in that confusion of dust and corpses that prevents him from turning his pain into breaths, breaths into life, and life into forgiveness.

He can’t for the life of him wash away the blood from his hands, the feeling of vacuum from under his fingers, and he doesn’t fucking know what to do next.

The roof is silent. Bart’s hospital sleeps below him, and John is laying down, looking at London with a fist on the last inch of matter.

His skin is crumbling, reversing itself into dust.

Ghosts reply to his questions in absolute silence.

He had spent a lifetime in the shadows.

Trying not to fail. Not to fall.

His father would always tell him to avoid certain books. Some songs.

Not looking at specific people was a strict rule.

But maybe that’s not.

It.

That’s not it, John remembers, no. Looking was permitted. Looking up wasn’t.

Do not look up to strangers, to faggots, to women.

To women, maybe. I mean, not looking up, no, no. Still dangerous.

Looking into. Looking for.

Woman are trophies, choose the most expensive. It’ll look great on you, son.

You will get what you deserve. Then and only then.

Men don’t cry, men don’t talk.

What do you need it for anyway. Your strength will never be in laughter, you are a soldier.

You are.

You are. A soldier.

John Watson, you are a soldier, goddammit.

Why is it taking it so long.

No, I mean it. Why did it take so long? _Why can I only see it now?_

Nightmares still thunder into the night sky.

His mum and her lullabies still ache inside his chest.

His father forgot it, his father drank it.

John tried to swallow it and ended it up vomiting it all out.

Choices were so out of his control. Harry slid away from his arms and his dad kept him in place.

She’s not worth it. She’s insane.

Let her go.

Harry was beyond any word he could think of.

She had clouds coming out from her back when she was upset. She painted oceans with tears, sang her happiness in silences.

Her voice red and thin, covered in blankets.

She’d destroy herself with a clap of eyelids, and rebuild galaxies with one finger.

Harry went missing when not wanted.

John would sit on her bed when he found it empty and take out photographs from the top drawer. Memories he could not touch. Lives he could not live.

When she closed the door that day, he shouted her name.

Their father slapped him. He had whispered “fuck you” to him instead of saying “don’t go” to her. 

John would often stare at those portraits, hung on every wall of his childhood home. 

People that were supposed to look like him.

_John, do not fail to pretend._

Do not fall in love with the wrong person.

Don’t, John. Don’t watch them fall.

Don’t watch them die.

It’ll kill you, and you’ll know who to blame.

It’ll be the first time you’ll beg for something that’s not life.

Your life.

That’s not.

Skin on skin. Why does it feel so good, why does it burn.

_Christ. I don’t wanna be like my sister_ I don’t wanna be like my sister I cannot do that I don’t know how to love like her. I don’t know how she does it.

How she manages to love her love.

He had wanted to kiss Sherlock so many times.

On a crime scene, because you’ve got something on your nose.

And stay still, can you not stay still?

Why can’t you, and your fingers on my arm, and your breath on my cheeks, and why can’t you.

In their kitchen, as a mistake.

Trying to open the fridge, stumbling into him instead.

Before going to sleep. As soon as they wake up, brushing legs.

Eating in a cheap restaurant. Giving out compliments in the form of very clever jokes.

He had wanted to hold him and never did. Never tried.

Remembering the rule, the famous one.

Do not fail and do not fall.

Neither in or out of love.

_Jesus, what a trick I performed._

He did not fail, though he fell.

Sherlock fell, too.

Maybe, had he failed, Sherlock would not have fallen.

They could have faced it as one.

Those remarkable failures.

John looks down and does not stare.

Wonders in tears.

A shelter too big for his instruments to fix, a question too important.

Words too long to pronounce out loud.

He won’t jump now. He’s almost there. He needs to understand, that’s all.

Learning to swim: that was contemplated.

But the sea does not tell you of its length.

If you drown, I’m afraid it was only a terrible miscalculation on your part.

John has faced the water all at once. For that, he cannot open his eyes.

For that, he cannot move.

Sherlock had always been able to make him feel free. Limitlessly himself.

Alive in his shameless pain.

His death had been nothing but a contradiction.

John’s heart smashes into pieces, his lungs gasp for breath.

Trajectories of lies meet all at one point. His fist, tightened like a nod.

He waits there for what seems like seconds.

Only seconds, the infinite ones.

And then he hears a noise coming from beside him.

Nightmares crash and the earth stops moving, as the door that leads to the roof opens up, heavy like the entrance of a cage.

His eyes are still closed when Sherlock whispers his name. 


	9. I should have left sooner

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Saturday, 10th of August, months before the events of the story take place. John’s wedding.

_John got out of the room and everyone kept dancing. _

_The noise behind him, gently muffled in the distance, made him shudder._

_Sherlock was walking alone, swiftly, with a kind of elegance John would not know how to describe. He looked delicate and yet somehow invincible._

_His legs started moving by themselves, struggling to keep up, and the wedding suit felt tighter. Sherlock already looked so far away._

I should have left sooner, _John thought, briefly._

_When he finally came so close that he could almost touch him, a gust of summer’s wind wrapped itself around them and Sherlock said: “Please don’t”._

_They both immediately stopped._

_John did not know what to do. He had expected it to be easier, to be obvious, to be well played, expertly made up on the spot. He had expected to find the least obvious shortcut to bring everything back to the status quo._

_But Sherlock’s back was tensed and his voice was a quivering mess. He wasn’t gonna fix anything with a joke. Not even if he had wanted to._

_“Don’t ask me,” Sherlock whispered, almost breathless, “I don’t think you would want to hear my answer.”_

_“I thought it was going well, I thought you settled down for this.” He paused. “For me.”_

_Sherlock turned towards the husband, the captain, towards his best friend, and there was no shame in his eyes, not in even in those countless spots filled with tears. “Yes, that was my intent, John.”_

_“What changed?” John asked, desperate._

_Desperation is not an emotion you are supposed to unravel so easily after your own wedding. And yet, although hidden in the lines of John’s face, how incredible tangible it was for expert hands._

_“I have fallen.”_

_Sherlock said it in a breath, looking at the ground, terrified and mortified by his own words, but determined and strong like the bluest blue at the bottom of every ocean._

_John’s head missed it. The ground slid away from under his shoes. “What do you mean? is this about what happened with Moriarty?”_

_He stared at Sherlock with such violent fear in his eyes that Sherlock couldn’t help but stare back. John hoped that if he didn’t blink, if he focused, it wouldn’t happen, not in front of him, not so distinctly._

_His Monster burned, and burned, and burned. _

_“No, and yet yes, in a sense.”_

_John just said his name, _tentatively_, nearly agonisingly._

_He would do that sometimes, during difficult cases, when Sherlock teased him with cryptic, cruel sentences he could not understand. Except maybe this time he did understand. And it was worse._

_Sherlock looked away. “This fall has nothing to do with him. “_

_“Where did you fall?” John said, refusing to accept the obvious explanation, refusing to even remotely assume that Sherlock was talking about _that_._

_“Where?”A sad smile appeared on his face, like a star on a cloudy night. “Oh, that is a rather philosophical question.” _

_John nodded, shifted his weight on his other leg, his gaze now fixed on the grass. “Okay, why?”_

_It was silence then. Sherlock waited, silently forcing John to look at him. He would not say it if not to his eyes._

_John breathed in. Breathed out. And looked up._

_And again, Sherlock smiled. There was sorrow —and love, undeniable love— packed into every letter that came out to his lips. “I don’t really know. Mrs. Hudson might call it destiny.”_

_“Sherlock, what are you talking about?”_

_“I have fallen,” Sherlock repeated, with care, “with you.”_

_John didn’t say anything. His body stiffened._

_Sherlock felt so strongly the urge to touch him, that it physically hurt not to move._

_“I find the proposition “with” extremely inaccurate for the expression,” he added instead, scared like a child would be, trying to fix a broken bone with expired chocolate. “It implies the other person is falling with you, which is not always the case.”_

_Silence again. John looked devastated. Sherlock had not fully predicted it, and for each word he said, he seemed to hurt him more._

_“Is this a trick?”_

_“I’m afraid it’s not.”_

_There was still music, playing in the distance. Mary waiting for his spouse to come back. A life John didn’t want, not if he could have this. Not if he could choose _this_._

_Sherlock kept talking, for language had always reassured him, calmed him down, gave him the air he needed, despite the tears that inexplicably got in the way of his tongue._

_“Maybe I should specify that my fall is not exactly qualifiable as change, since it’s not really any news. But it’s nevertheless the correct explanation to our— _my_ problem.”_

_John asked the only question he could dare to speak, in the middle of the thousands his Monster held._

_“What would you do,” he started, and he could see explosions from behind his closed eyelids, “if I. If I told you I.”_

_Since he could not, in any way, say it all, he met his gaze as an apology. Sherlock, for a split second, looked bright, the brightest John could ever recall seeing him._

_“Anything.”_

_The skies vanished from above them._

_John put both his hands on his face, turned towards the party, almost screamed, almost cried, almost lost it all._

_He didn’t look. _

_“Please, go.”_

_Sherlock did._


	10. Forgive me

John is silent.

It’s frightening.

Sherlock can taste fear in the inside of his mouth, as if it were a flavour hidden in his blood.

Fear pervades everything he is made of.

Words petrify in his throat and there’s nothing around him, nothing in his mind, no anchor to keep him steady, no numbers to give him instruction, no dots to connect.

It’s all there, trapped in a cage of ghosts and monsters, it’s all written down in a language Sherlock has always had such a hard time understanding.

He says his name once again, and it’s the only thing he deems himself capable of doing.

John still doesn’t react.

He moves very slowly, and his whole body stiffens. Like one of those nightmares, when danger is approaching and you just can’t move.

For a moment, he is truly terrified. He looks at John’s back, and it’s so dark and curved in and on itself, that he wonders if he is alive. If maybe he has passed out, if he is drunk, if he has a gun in his hand.

The ground shakes under his feet, and a wave of destruction hits his whole body. _Is this_, he wonders, barely managing to get the words out of his deep subconscious,_ what I put him through?_

Sherlock is one step away from collapsing, and for half a second, he tries to guess how it’ll happen. _Here it is, _his mind whispers, and he is waiting for the whimper or the bang.

But then, exactly at the right moment, John breathes, and Sherlock lets out a sight.

The nightmare’s veil melts away, if only slightly, and Sherlock moves closer, faster. He doesn’t get the chance to plan his movements, and before he can notice the passage of time or recognise the will of his muscles, he is sat on the ground of Bart’s roof, right beside John, not daring to touch him.

  
“Are you okay?”, he asks, and John sobs. Or laughs. Sherlock couldn’t tell.

The air is heavy, and the night sky is a grey blur. Large clouds still hang upon their heads, and Sherlock can barely make out John’s figure. Even up this close, he can’t focus on him. He keeps zooming out, and he has to close his eyes to remind himself the John beside him is the real one.

“John,” he says again, and that’s how he finds out he is crying.

“I’m sorry,” John says, and he is not crying, but Sherlock truly wishes he were. His voice is a wall, it’s a darkened brick thrown into a pillow.

“I’m sorry,” he repeats, “I am just trying to— can you step away from the border?”

John’s voice is beginning to crack. Sherlock feels all the hairs of his body stand up.

“If I do that, will you do the same?”

John doesn’t answer, but, slowly, so very slowly, he crawls backwards.

Sherlock follows him shortly after, and if someone were to ask him, he couldn’t tell what whether he is sitting, standing, shivering. Every part of his own body feels unknown and out of his reach.

John, eyes closed, is still turn towards the ground.

Sherlock waits, and waits, and waits. His mind empties itself, moving out anything that’s not needed, until there is only a room left. He sits there, looking at the walls, trying to keep his organs steady, and he waits.

It’s the hardest thing he has ever done in his life. Harder than getting through a lonely childhood, harder than losing his self-esteem, piece by piece, harder than killing Moriarty, harder than killing what was left of an unimaginable future, harder than declaring his love to a man that has just got married, harder than dealing with all of his unbearable absences.

It’s truly worse than standing on a borderline, truly worse than getting shot at, tortured, beaten down, mocked, diminished.

If only —perhaps even exclusively— because none of these traumas can dream to touch his mind now, and there is no comparison, really, when you don’t dispose of enough air to make space for more than one thing.

It takes much love to put together the extents of pain.

Sherlock has felt helpless before, and this is not the case. Helplessness suffocates you slowly and you don’t even have time to notice it.

But this- this is like drowning, and Sherlock has never really known how to swim in the first place.

Eventually, John slowly raises his head. Tears are finally streaming down his cheeks, and he looks exhausted.

He swallows, opens his mouth a couple of times. Closes it again.

“I was devastated. When you jumped, I. I was devastated.”

Sherlock can hear the cracks in his words, each one for itself. They cut through his head, precise and sharp.

As John struggles to keep on talking, he quickly inspects him with his eyes, checking for injuries or weapons of some sort.

There is not any.

He is wearing a shirt Sherlock has never seen before, no doubt brought by Mary. His hair is a little longer, noticeably messier. He looks unclean and sleep-deprived, but not drunk.

Sherlock’s heart is racing in his chest, and he doesn’t know what to do.

John has never felt so distant, so alien, so unreachable, but yet.

But yet, it’s the closest he has ever let himself get.

“I know I’ve said that before. And I thought it was enough, but it. It isn’t.”

“Okay,” Sherlock says, slowly, “okay.”

“You were- Christ, I had built my life onto you, and then you were gone and I— I couldn’t move, Sherlock, I just couldn’t—“

He starts breathing hard, and at least he meets Sherlock’s gaze. There is loss in that exchange, a blue kind of loss, a sample from the bottom of the deepest ocean, the jerked movements of a fish that needs to feel the sun again, and there’s so much space in the middle of it, that Sherlock is worried he’ll never be able to reach through.

“Sherlock,” John says again, and it sounds like a prayer.

“Forgive me,” Sherlock whispers, and he, too, has said it before, but this time, he is not pulling a trick, no bomb is about to stay put, patiently waiting to be dismantled.

Maybe, this time the explosion will actually come. Neither of them knows for sure.

“Forgive me,” he repeats, “for my silences,” and it’s not what he has expected himself to say, but as soon as he begins to hear his own voice sliding down his lips, carelessly and from afar, he knows his skin to soften slightly in relief.

“Forgive me,” he goes on, once more to his own surprise, “for all the misinformation, for the omissions, for the lies. I thought I ought to protect you.”

John raises his head at that, and Sherlock doesn’t let him reply.

He talks with his eyes closed.

“Vulnerability scares me immensely. Throughout the years, I have been trying to push it away from me, from us, and most importantly from you,” Sherlock says, and one day — a day so very distant from this so very dark hour — he will know that right now he had looked like a clever child who got himself expelled from school, found the experience devastating, and eventually accepted that that outcome, that exile, had been, at least partially, a product of his own making. 

He had looked, right now, sitting on the floor cross-legged —his body fully shaking—, like a flower blooming in the middle of a storm.

“This armour I have forced upon myself, I thought it would prevent me from getting hurt, from becoming weak. But it hasn’t. I have been damaged by an antivirus that has gone too far. Every weapon that has found its way through my heart has been held by _my _hand.And my hand has hurt you, too. _I_ have hurt you, too. It’s not entirely my fault, it might not even have been _primarily_ my fault, but it was my hand.”

Sherlock’s eyes open up again, and found themselves locked into John’s.

“I’m asking you to forgive, ” he says, and it’s merely a whisper, “but I will not ask you to forget. I need help, John, and I think you need it, too. We can’t keep erasing our past, we can’t keep applying to a script full of loose ends. It won’t be logical, it won’t be clever. It will just be hollow.”

After Sherlock says that, there’s a moment of stillness. And then John does the most unexpected thing: he smiles.

For a moment, all the pain he seemed to held dries out, disappears at once from his skin, crumbles aways without a sound.

Sherlock observes it in awe, and his chest, all of a sudden, gets infinitely warmer.

  
“How— Sherlock, how did you get there?” he says, and Sherlock doesn’t understand. He looks puzzled, and John smiles wider.

It’s like witnessing a miracle.

“Before, Sherlock, you’d never— Since I’ve known you, whenever something painful would happen to you, you would seek drugs, cases, adrenaline. But not help, Sherlock, decisively not help.”

(He stops to breathe, then, and his eyes are getting brighter.

_Oh_, Sherlock thinks. _Oh_.)

“I never thought you would actually seek honesty. I never thought you’d be willing to openly ask for help.”

He is still smiling when he finishes talking, and that’s when Sherlock realises— he is proud. He is happy for Sherlock, for how far Sherlock has come. So much and so intensely that for a second he is able to block out the pain.

The realisation crushes on Sherlock like thunder, and his skin rises on command.

It’s unbelievable, really —Sherlock briefly thinks— how easy for them it is to touch the other. How few are the words needed to temporarily change the colour of each other’s thoughts.

“I have had a big opportunity to be honest,” Sherlock says, and he can feel John’s face fall before he sees it, “and it has been unmistakably relieving. Even considering how much heavier my mind has become, at least I can use it freely. I would take freedom over what you might call calm, or security, anytime, any day.”

“It’s only when I am_ secure_,” he adds, almost as an afterthought, “that I give in to my danger nights. And if I had to do it again.”

(Sherlock tries to look away. He finds he can’t.)

“If I had to do it again, I would accept the risk of telling you. If I had to die again, and there was a way to let you know without undoubtedly ending your life, I would tell you.”

John is quiet or a long time. He focuses on his fingers and breathes hard under the clouds.

Sherlock wants to raise his hand and put it on John’s cheek. He wants to caress the skin under John’s ear with his thumb, slowly and gently.

He wants to kiss his forehead and hold his back, until John falls asleep, until he feels safe and his heart neither races nor threatens to stop beating.

When John finally looks at him, Sherlock thinks he knows.

“I thought coming up here would help me move on,” he says, and as Sherlock smiles, he starts laughing, too. Quietly, his skin gains colour.

“Surely there are less extreme therapeutic strategies,” Sherlock replies, with the edges of his mouth curled up, and the air around them, even if for a short while, finally lets their muscles relax.

“How did you know how to find me?”, John asks, and his voice is still very far from composed.

Sherlock instinctively glances down at his phone. “Mary called me. She didn’t know where you went. She was concerned.”

He takes it out, then, and he offers it to John.

“I know you don’t have one on you,” he says, “if you want to let her know you are okay— well. You can use mine.”

John takes it. His finger brush with Sherlock’s.

He doesn’t let go, and he feels himself remembering.

“I don’t wanna do this now,” he says.

“Do what?”

“This— me and you. I don’t wanna do this now.” 

A burst of hope blows through Sherlock’s chest, and he fights not to give in to it.

“I want to go to Mary’s house”, John says, and Sherlock shivers at _Mary’s house_, “and I want to talk to her.”

“Okay.”

“When I have done that, I will call you.”

Sherlock nods and he is the first one to let go of his phone.

“I promise you,” John whispers, “I swear to God, Sherlock, we will find a way.”

And just like that, Sherlock’s hope gets loose.


	11. Mary

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if anyone is actually following this day by day, then sorry! got sick first and then I was a little busy. missed a few days  
as always, thanks for reading

The keys crash loudly against the wooden bowl.

Mary’s house is quiet, and Mary is lying wide awake on the sofa.

John thinks he won’t be able to do it— something, _someone_ will stop his movements, force his Monster back into the cage, annihilate the last bit of energy he still holds.

But as he thinks that, as he tries with everything he has to focus on his goal and his goal only, there’s a part of him that knows nothing in this world could ever change his mind. He has suffered too intensely and decisively for too long. He has too much to lose.

Mary stands up in a jerk, and it’s then that John realises: it's fear.The thing that is hiding between her wrinkles, it’s fear. Not relief.

John should be surprised, but he is not.

He moves slowly, and when he finally sits down, right in front of her, he is still unsure of what he is going to say. His mind comes back to his nightmares, the panic that always came afterwards, that awful feeling of asphyxiation, and wonders when was it that he had learned to hold on to his cages instead of tearing them down. 

  
“Mary”, he starts, and she stops him almost instantly.

“You have nothing to worry about,” (she has taken his hand; John tries very hard not to retract it) “I am sure a little bit of time will fix everything.”

John stares at her, and laughs without humour. An unexpected deduction has reached his lips.

“You _are _clever.”

“What are you talking about?”

He blinks once. Twice. Then smirks dryly. “Why couldn’t you find me?”

(She is wearing a red scarf, an old headband, and make-up. Very light make-up.)

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t believe you would have let Sherlock find me if you could have done it yourself.”

“John, I don’t know what kind of theories you have been-“

“Mary, stop.”

The house is still quiet.

The furniture fades in the background, and John feels like an odd visitor that is not supposed to be there. A prisoner, if you will.

John knows Mary is not the only one to blame, and so to the voices in his head that urge him to stop, stay, shut up, go to sleep, close off whatever door just got open, to them — to Mary — he says what follows: 

“I don’t want to be with you.”

It’s simple, isn’t it?

Mary lets go of his hand.

“John, what is this about? What did you think happened?”

John feels rage boiling in his blood, and he tries not to give in to it.

“You didn’t find me.”

“Had I been able to, I certainly would have.”

“Maybe you don’t know what I’m going through,” (she calls his name, tries to stop him; he doesn’t let her), “maybe you don’t want to know, maybe you pretend not to. But it’s one of those three options, Mary, or you would have found me.”

She moves back on instinct. Scared, almost. “I called Sherlock because he had a better chance of finding you, why is it so hard to believe? He is a bloody detective, what did you expect me to do?”

_He is not a detective, he is a consulti- _“It’s not because of his detective-skills that he found me, Mary.”

She gets a little closer, trying to make up for the distance she accidentally deepened. “Why did he, then? Did you choose this outcome yourself, is this what you are trying to make me guess?”

John recognises the way she is trying to turn the conversation around. He ignores it.

“I don’t believe for a second you are blind to my pain. To my trauma, even.”

She makes an effort to compose herself— to soften, in a way. “John, please, listen to me. You are my husband and I have already made my vow. I have sworn that I would love you for my whole life, and I still plan to do that. No matter what happens.”

John shakes his head. “That’s not my point, Mary. You saw my distress, you saw how miserable I was, and you did nothing.”

“I stood by your side.”

“That was not what I needed, I didn’t need— _silence_, and I think you knew that. You couldn’t find me tonight, because in doing so you would have been forced to acknowledge my pain.”

She looks terrified, cornered down, unfairly cast outside of her dream world.

Part of John feels sorry for her, wonders what might have happened to her life, what pushed her to love a man that so clearly didn’t love her back. It could have been spite, it could have been fear, hate, self-loathing, loneliness. It could have been anything.

John doesn’t really have the energy to find out which one is the correct answer. Not now, at least.

“John, I won’t let you make this mistake.”

“Yes, you will.”

“You are really willing to destroy everything we built?”

“We haven’t built anything, you are fooling yourself if you think this an achievement. Look into my eyes and tell me _this _is an achievement— please, Mary, look, really _look_.”

She does. With great difficulty.

“Being married requires commitment, and a great deal of effort, John.“

“This is not effort, this is pain.”

“Our lives have not been easy, this is normal, this will pass! I was expecting pain, it comes with being alive! We can overcome pain, we can move past it!”

“To reach what? Where do you think _we _can get?” 

Mary tries to look away, and John’s hand starts trembling. He takes a deep breath and closes it into a fist.

“Mary, answer me, how far do you think we can go without walking in fucking circles?”

She is crying, now. Mumbling unintelligible words that wouldn’t mean anything if he were able to pick them apart.

“I have a lot to work on, and there is much I have not yet had the courage to face.” He takes her hands again now, and he digs hard and steadily into his heart until he eventually finds the genuine affection he somehow ended up feeling for the woman who is sitting across from him.

“Love,” he says, “is not supposed to hurt like this. It’s not only love that ties two people together, I know that much. There are many feelings in play, and some of them are painful. But not love. The act of loving, Mary, should not be so intertwined with suffering." 

John starts crying without even fucking registering it, while Mary, as she probably decides there is nothing she can do to change his mind, abruptly stops.

John locks eyes with her, and makes a deduction, to which follows a quick decision he doesn’t think he will ever regret. He gives an order. Sound and clear.

“You won’t say a word about Sherlock. You won’t diminish him, you won’t imply his actions have ever been driven by malicious intent, you won’t call him names, you won’t bring up the lies he has told me, the pain you think he has caused me, the mistake you believe he has made. You won’t even mention him, or I swear to god I will leave this house right now. Not in a few hours, not tomorrow, not in a week. I will leave it now, and I will never ever look at you with anything but disgust.”

Mary moves back, slowly, and opens her mouth one last time.

“I mean it,” John says, and that’s when she gets up.

“Do you want me to sleep on the couch?” she asks, and her voice is nothing if not composed.

“No. Take the bed.”

“Do you plan to leave soon?”

He nods as a soldier would do, and she looks both desperate and enraged, but if she wants to add something, she doesn’t. He, too, lets her go without comments.

When the room is clear, John starts crying again, and he sends a message to a number that he did not recall remembering by heart.


	12. if it took so long to understand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some time between 3 and 5 in the morning, John sends his sister a message.

_Harry?_

_hey. long time no see_

_Are you okay?_

_Alright I know we haven’t truly talked to each other in years. And that’s my fault, that’s totally my fault, but I just. I need help_

_from me?_

_Yes. It’s not a money thing, it’s nothing like that_

_I feel like I have already had this conversation. more than once, actually_

_But reversed?_

_yeah, pretty much._

_you can tell me, by the way. I wasn’t even sleeping_

_And you are okay?_

_I am going to be_

_let it be enough for now and just say what you wanted to say_

_Do you feel free?_

_am I allowed to be rude_

_If that’s what it takes_

_why the fuck are you asking me that_

_are you a hippie now_

_No, it’s a serious question_

_well, in that case_

_it depends on what you mean by “free”_

_Do you feel like you are allowed to be?_

_to be what?_

_Yourself_

_in society? fuck no_

_doesn’t mean I won’t be myself in spite of them anyway_

_Okay but. Are you comfortable with what you are, are you ever afraid of what you might be?_

_christ John what the fuck are you talking about_

_This is about dad_

_oh, well, okay_

_what about him_

_He hated you_

_thanks for the reminder_

_I’m sorry, I just. He hated you_

_have I offended you somehow?_

_Why didn’t you try to change?_

_He hated you, and you made no effort to change that_

_what the fuck are you implying_

_You are getting this the wrong way_

_I am trying to understand how you managed that_

_how I made our dad hate me?_

_No, how you moved past it_

_who says I did_

_You married a woman_

_I divorced from that woman_

_That doesn’t erase your marriage_

_I do wish it did_

_Harry._

_okay, okay, I get what you are asking_

_i mean please don’t kid yourself into thinking that it’s been easy_

_because it fucking hasn’t._

_I have felt guilty for a very long time and if it took so long to actually become myself, it’s because it was and still is very fucking hard._

_but, to answer your question, I guess that actively trying to follow his orders was always too painful for me, even when the alternative wasn’t much fun either. it wasn’t worth it._

_He did try to have a relationship with you at some point, didn’t he?_

_there was nothing he liked about me, his concept of “relationship” was him trying to dictate my life’s decisions and me doing exactly as he said_

_Did you think he liked me?_

_you were more obedient. in his eyes, you were promising._ _i think that with you he tried harder_

_i just. shit_

_What?_

_I just remember that I wrote you a letter once_

_A letter?_

_do you remember that time we went out camping? we met another family there_

_you became friends with their children_

_dad didn’t like them AT ALL_

_Yes, I do remember_

_I spent the whole trip reading, I wasn’t in the mood for anything else_

_so I remember watching the whole thing from afar_

_and it was SO obvious dad would have hated them, but you just didn’t fucking notice until he confronted you aboutit. after that you quietly backed down, didn’t even flinch._

_and I saw that and I wrote you a letter_

_I like writing, too, btw. I don’t think I have ever told you that_

_Do you still have it?_

_it mentioned how hard dad “tried” with you, that’s why I was reminded of it_

_I kept it behind a family picture. I don’t think I have thrown it away_

_didn’t think you would understand if you were to read it back then_

_maybe I was wrong, who knows_

_Can you try to find it?_

_will send it to you in the morning_

_Seriously?_

_I hope so_

_I live in a small apartment, if it’s here, it really won’t take long to find it_

_Thank you. For keeping it and for offering to send it now._

_Can I ask you something?_

_yeah, go ahead_

_Why didn’t you come to my wedding?_

_I don’t know, I didn’t feel comfortable_

_we weren’t even on speaking terms, John_

_and the way you invited me was weird_

_Weird how?_

_you didn’t seem_

_how do i say this_

_you just didn’t seem happy, John_

_I didn’t want to see it_

_Okay_

_I don’t want to assume anything_

_Do you happen to know the name of a good therapist in London?_

_the last one wasn’t working for you?_

_I don’t know_

_well, in my experience you have to find one that’s good for you specifically. a therapist might be generally good but not the right one for you_

_I will send you some names in the morning_

_you can try going back to your last one, too_

_it factors heavily in your sessions, whether you are willing to be vulnerable or not, i think_

_You are probably right_

_How is it that everyone has gotten healthier while I wasn’t looking_

_“people change”?_

_god i have become so fucking cheesy_

_It must be a side effect of growth_

_Speaking of cheesiness: thank you for this conversation. Truly. _ _It genuinely helped me._

_I’m glad I could help_

_Okay. I am probably going to sleep now._

_I will send you the letter in the morning_

_oh, and John?_

_Yes?_

_can you promise me not to disappear?_

_after I sent you the letter and you hopefully solve your problems?_

_I promise._

_Truly, Harry, I promise._

_okay then_

_I have missed you_

_I have missed you, too_

_Have a good night._

_the night part of today is basically almost over_

_Have a good day?_

_thank you_

_you git._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love Harry. Chose to disregard the arguable canon information we get from John's blog (so, the comments) cause I just love my idea of her, and that idea doesn't work well with those comments.   
Thank for reading 🌻


	13. With love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry’s letter.  
sent at nine in the morning  
transcribed because her handwriting is shit

_dad tries so hard with you that sometimes I fear he might succeed. _  
_ he lays it down on you slowly, meticulously, and when you turn around to see what’s touching your back, he is already gone. sitting nonchalantly in his chair, with a beer and a vacant smile. _  
_ you always, always gaze at the mirror, like you are the suspect most likely to be guilty, and he is the gentle officer pointing you to the right direction._

_today you came back smiling and he painted your face back to a zero-sum. _  
_ “I don’t like them” he said, and you just looked down._

_the little one reads your favorite comics. the girl has your sense of humour, and you somehow get along wonderfully with the middle child, a weird red-headed human who wears flower crowns and pink shirts. they are not British and their culture fascinates you. their dad is a little grumpy and their mum talks too much, but you like them. I like them, too._

_but then, again, the middle child is weird and wears flower crowns and pink shirts, and their dad is fine with it — he wears them as well, sometimes. but then, again, their mum is outgoing and speaks up whenever she feels like it._

_but then, again, they encourage you to dance and cry and laugh and shout back._  
_ and well, again, dad is fucking a piece of shit._

_so he says, “I don’t like them”, and when they’ll play hide and seek in the sun, they will do it without you. you will look at them from afar, and dad will say, “alright?”, and you will say nothing because there will be nothing to be said._

_one day you will feel ashamed because you dreamt butterflies, and I will struggle to witness it._

_I hope that when dad is gone, you will not act like he isn’t. _  
_ I’d hope you will be the one to send him away. _  
  
_ With love,_  
_ Harry._


	14. John

He sends Sherlock a text message that says _what about dinner, is that okay?_

Sherlock replies: _Tonight? _and leaves out his initials. John takes a very deep breath and moves his suitcase away from the stairs.

Mary is not home.

John looks around and feels too guilty to leave without a word.

He sits down and stares at the wall for a while. Then he takes a receipt out of his pockets and behind that he writes a note that ends up on Mary’s fridge.

The note says:

_Now that I am awake_

_I need to be sure I am where I need to be, doing what I think it’s best._

_Fear and love— not the same thing. _

_I only see it now._

_I should have left sooner. _ _Forgive me, Mary, if it took so long to understand._

_With love, John_

He looks at it for a while, and eventually a small smile settles on his face.

He gets out of the door at eleven in the morning, and hopes Greg won’t be too bothered if John stashes a suitcase in his apartment.

_Yes, tonight, _he replies to Sherlock’s text, _I will be at Baker Street at seven._


	15. in case you hadn't realised

Sherlock is wearing a fancy suit.

It’s the first thing John notices, really. It’s almost surreal.

So many years went by, so many years he waited to have a single opportunity to truthfully, shamelessly take him all in, and the moment he does, that’s the first thing he sees. A black, fancy suit. The red shape of a flower standing out just below his left shoulder.

He looks at his eyes, next. There’s hesitance, and nervousness. For a moment, the door left open by the gentle press of his hand, Sherlock doesn’t move. Stands still, framed by the doorway.

John is on the other end of the sidewalk, leaning over a car that’s obviously not his.

A few people walk by, crossing the space between them as if it was just normal ground.

“Hi,” says John, not smiling, but almost there, and Sherlock smiles back. It’s a shy thing, sincere and relentlessly vulnerable.

It’s a beautiful thing. Obviously. It’s _Sherlock_’s smile.

“Shall we?” John asks, gesturing towards a path ahead— any it’s fine.

“Oh, sorry, yes,” Sherlock replies, as if untangling from a dream. He closes the door behind him, and walks slowly, almost comically so, until John starts walking, too. Until they meet in the middle.

From there, neither of them knows what to do.

John thinks it’s fucking ridiculous. They have walked, run together for hours at a time, not a word spoken, and almost never would they share a single moment of uneasiness, but now, here and finally free, they are unable to take a single step without shivering.

Eventually, it begins with a grin.

John looks at Sherlock, the familiarity of him, and he knows he would be able to describe him in such detail that any artist could build his entire face from scratch. He looks at his clothes, and his hands, and his forehead, always frowning like it’s its job to do so, and he grins, and then grins wider, and then laughs at how unfair and beautiful life can be.

Sherlock almost looks offended at first, but then, as he meets John’s gaze, he starts laughing, too. He rolls his eyes, like a child who’s been found out.

“Shut up,” he says, “we can’t giggle now.”

John bites his lip, still smiling, and he looks up at Sherlock. They are blocking the sideway’s traffic, taking up all this space in the middle of it, and John doesn’t care.

“Why?”

“I would imagine it has to be done properly.”

John looks up at the clouds, briefly. He comes back to Sherlock and he can’t stop smiling. “What has?”

Sherlock struggles to find the right words, gestures between them. “This.”

“This, _what_?” John asks, playfully, and he sees in Sherlock’s eyes that he hadn’t dared to hope for this much joy.

“Don’t make me say it,” Sherlock says, after just a bit, unconsciously looking down at his suit.

John touches Sherlock’s shoulder, places his thumb right above the flower.

It’s so easy that it doesn’t seem real.

Sherlock takes in a small breath that John feels more than hears.

“Really?” he asks, looking at the flower, and Sherlock sighs.

“Not a word,” he replies, and it’s easy. God, it’s so easy.

He takes his hand back to his pockets. Sherlock looks at it and then up at John.

“Where are we eating?”

John opens his mouth. Closes it again. Looking somewhere else, and still bloody smiling, he says: “Angelo’s.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Sherlock replies, instantly, and John laughs.

“Honestly,” John says, feeling braver than he has ever felt in his entire goddamn life, “I did it for him. He seemed so eager to see you with a date.”

John looks at Sherlock, then. Really looks.

“Didn’t want to disappoint,” he adds, and he is still staring, and Sherlock is still staring, and for a moment he wants to kiss him right now and right here, loud and unashamed, so that anyone can see them, so that anyone can try and fail to deny them.

Finally, _finally_, he perceives his Monster growing till they are no longer separate people, and the Monster’s eyes are _his _eyes, the Monster’s heart is _his_ heart, and his love is no longer contained, can no longer be contained.

“Let’s not let him down, then,” Sherlock says, sliding his gaze to his cheek and mouth and then shoulder arm hand and the tips of his fingers, till John’s body runs out and John has to walk right beside him so that Sherlock can keep looking.

They start moving like that, seamlessly.

It comes back to John, all at once. The way he feels when he walks beside Sherlock.

Like he is meant to be there. Like there, like his place, is just somewhere with him.

Thing is: John can feel it, the fear underneath it all. He can feel it, and he knows Sherlock can, too. There’s pain and damage and blood.

But there’s also love. The ace right up his sleeve.

The weapon he never knew he had, the weapon he had assumed was a weakness.

_It’s there_, John thinks, _it’s there and I can have it. It’s time. It’s ours._

Sometimes (on rare occasions, mind you, and only when alcohol was involved) he would fantasize about this.

Him walking towards a future he actually wants, with the man he actually loves. Not yet living it, not yet kissing him, not yet feeling it on own skin— just existing, in those fragile moments in between. Where certainty is a guarantee and you already see the water on the horizon, but your body is still dry.   
You reach the empty beach, and you can _smell_ it. You begin to take off your clothes and look for a place to use as refuge. A spot of land you dare to use as shelter for what you have to leave behind, hoping that no one will steal your clothes. Risking it, not caring if someone does.

And then, just right then, when you finally take in the sight of the ocean— the ocean or the sea, whatever it is, it doesn’t actually matter as long as you can imagine it as a never-ending expanse, piercing the edge of your world— you start to think that you might deserve it.

Or, maybe, that no one does, because no one has to.

It just happens. Your only job is to take it in.

And so, you are okay. You are good, fine, happy, you are right.

It fits, it works, it fixes your stare into something you like. Love.

“I don’t actually care,” John says, out of the blue, and Sherlock stops, dead in his tracks, just a few feet away.

“What?” he says, somewhat alarmed, and John doesn’t really mean to scare him, but.

“I don’t actually care. It does not matter, how much time it has been.”

Sherlock doesn’t say anything, so John keeps going.

“It doesn’t matter, what people think of me, you, us. What I think of myself. We are only ever like this, we could only ever be like this.”

Sherlock blushes. He looks around, finds no one of interest. Just a London street corner on a work day’s evening.

He stares at John like he might disappear.

“What do you mean?” Sherlock asks, so lost and clueless that John remembers him saying_ everybody wants to believe it – that’s what makes it so clever. A lie that’s preferable to the truth. All my brilliant deductions were just a sham. No-one feels inadequate – Sherlock Holmes is just an ordinary man._

John looks at him and thinks to himself, _ordinary men should look like him._

_I hope they do. I hope love like this is ordinary. I hope every man on earth is this ordinary, this simple. I hope it all boils down to this._

“I don’t actually care about all those things I was convinced I cared about. I think care was just the wrong word.”

Sherlock frowns. “Which one is the right one, then?”

John bites his lips, ponders, wonders. Ends up with this: “I feared them.”

Sherlock takes a step closer. Asks, “What do you mean?”

“I was trained to fear them. In the same way you tricked yourself into believing you are a sociopath without a heart.”

Pain, empathy, is painted all over Sherlock’s eyes. _He wants to fix this_, John thinks, _he is desperate to go back in time and fix every wrong that was ever done to me._

_I can see this. I can actually see this._

And he can. He can read the lines like an open book. He_ knows _Sherlock loves him, and not just because he heard him say it. He can feel it.

It’s as if a spell was cast all over his body.   
  
_I am loved_, he thinks.

_ _

“What if I actually am a sociopath?” Sherlock says, after what seems like centuries, and he seems… scared. Sad.

John can see him, on the edge of Bart’s roof. Both times he went there.

The first, standing. Taking a choice he shouldn’t have taken, and yet the only one available. His words reaching John only from afar. The blur that came after. His alive corpse, a paradox in itself, lying down on the pavement, his wrist in John’s hand.

The second one, sitting down beside him. Desperate to fix whatever was broken, lost, killed— right there on the scene of the crime, if only years later.

Desperate for John to hold his end of the string.

John smiles. “I really don’t think you are.”

“How can you be so sure?”

John lowers his head for a moment so that Sherlock will not notice his tears.

He wipes them with his hand, looks back up at him.

And then, right then, he is physically unable to hold it. He cups Sherlock’s cheek with his hand, and Sherlock leans into it. Totally unconsciously. John can tell.

“They got you wrong,” John says.

“What?” Sherlock asks, somehow still clueless, staring into John’s eyes.

“They got you wrong. They are all idiots and they all got you wrong. I don’t understand how they might look at you and don’t get you, don’t even give you a chance, but they have, all, got you wrong.”

“Wha—“ Sherlock starts saying, again, and John smiles and they are in public and he doesn’t give a shit.

He kisses him.

Their lips meet and for a solid second Sherlock does absolutely nothing. Then, as though waking up from a coma, Sherlock starts kissing back.

And it’s the kiss per se, that John would remember, obviously.

Throughout the years, he would remember the way their mouths opened, the way it _felt_, kissing Sherlock Holmes, unashamedly, in the middle of a London street corner on a work day’s evening.

The taste of Sherlock’s mouth, how weird it was, how new, how human— how right it felt.

But he would also remember Sherlock’s hands, the way they moved: slowly, tentatively.

He would remember thinking, _it’s the same for him, too. He’s looking at the ocean and finally thinking it’s there. It’s there for him, it’s there because of him_.

He would remember touching Sherlock’s curls, running his hands through them. He would remember Sherlock’s fingers on his neck, warm and alive.

How, for the first time in years, not a single part of him was grieving Sherlock Holmes.

When they break apart, Sherlock rests his forehead on his.

“Well,” he says, whispering, one step away from crying, “that wasn’t so hard, was it?”

For the second time today, it begins with a grin.

John starts laughing. First quietly. Then the laughter grows, feeding off of all this joy John feels exploding inside of him, and Sherlock joins him.

“You idiot,” John says, playfully pushing him away, and Sherlock lets him, still laughing, or possibly laughing harder.

“We almost died, several times,” Sherlock starts listing, and his charisma is slowly coming back to him, colouring his cheeks, and John can’t help himself, he gets close again, wraps his arms around Sherlock’s neck. He feels so young.

“Your life got threatened just so I would get desperate and instantly endanger mine, I faked my death, you got married—”

“Shut up,” John says, smiling.

“When you really think about it,” Sherlock says, squinting with his eyes, “after all of that, and, what? Maybe one hundred and fifty-nine public statement you made about not being gay, we finally made it.”

One would think it might hurt, that John might not want to hear all of this in such a playful manner.

But he does. He looks at Sherlock, and he does. It’s like Sherlock’s voice exorcises everything. It doesn’t hurt anymore if Sherlock says it like that.

Or maybe it does, but definitely not now. Definitely not now.

He kisses him again, wordlessly, because maybe there’s a limit to what he is able to voice right now, and every time Sherlock touches him in some place he has never touched before, John feels as though he is painting his body back to life.

What’s more, there’s something in Sherlock’s movements that is still so shy and gentle that John thinks he might never be able to stop blushing.

They break apart, after a while, mostly because John is afraid someone might accuse them of public indecency, and eventually resume walking. Giggling like teenagers all the while. Not yet holding hands, but walking so close that their shoulders are touching. 

John keeps expecting this to feel unreal. He is almost waiting for the fear and the disbelief to crush him, but it never comes.

There’s just joy. Joy takes so much room, there’s no space for anything else.

Sherlock does not speak it, but John can feel it in him, too. Radiating from him as though he were the bloody sun. 

John thinks back to all the times he has seen him lifeless, terrified, unimaginably bored, alone, hopeless.

All of those times when they could have done something, said something, and didn’t.

“I don’t have friends, John,” John says, whispering, almost to himself, and Sherlock turns to look at him. John notices and raises his voice, because there it is again, the joy. Nothing he thinks, sees, feels, can escape it.

“Friends,” he resumes, now smiling, “are a distraction. Things normal people have in their boring lives.”

Sherlock laughs. He doesn’t even fucking reply or try to defend himself. He _laughs_.

So John keeps going.

“And while I am flatter by your interest, John—“

“Oh, don’t bring that up.”

“Why not?” John asks, laughing.

“Do you have any idea, what you would have done? If I had expressed any interest?”

“Oh, so you were interested.”

Sherlock stops walking for a second. Looks at him, teasingly. “Were _you_?”

John feels himself blushing. “Keep walking, please.”

Sherlock does, performing it like it’s a sheer miracle that he followed his order.

“And besides,” John says, “I didn’t _know_ that I was interested in you. Though I was.”

“Well, you have never been the sharpest.”

John ignores him. Tries and fails not to smile.

“Plus, I am not gay. I still stand by it.”

“You are bisexual, so what. People meant it an umbrella term.”

“They did not.”

“Maybe, but I doubt their understanding of human sexuality as a binary code rather than a spectrum is what actually bothered you.”

“It bothers me now.”

“I suppose that’s fair,” Sherlock says, eventually, and looks at John with the corner of his eyes, shortening their already inexistent distance, ever so slightly.

The backs of their hand touch, and John can’t remember why he has ever called Sherlock insensible.

“By the way, when did you deduce that one?” John asks, shifting the focus of the conversation just a little bit to the side.

Sherlock doesn’t ask _deduce what?_, John doesn’t say _I mean, me being bisexual_.

They just know.

“Soon after we met.”

“So you knew I fancied you.”

Sherlock smiles, then sighs, pretend-annoyed. “_Fancied _me?”

“Ignore the bloody wording, please.”

“No, well, it’s more the way you hold yourself. The way you talk and look at people and brush over certain subjects.”

“Am I this obvious?”

“To a gay person who has been around a lot of gay people, yes. Maybe. If said person is also a genius.”

“You have been around a lot of gay people?” John asks, genuinely curious, and Sherlock smiles.

“My youth was a bit of a mess.”

John lets out a laugh. “A bit of a mess?”

“Not in the way you think. I still was a loner, but I. Well, one day I will tell you. Not now, though. It would spoil the mood.”

Finally, almost thoughtlessly, they have arrived in front of Angelo’s restaurant.

“What mood are we in right now?” John asks, and Sherlock shrugs.

“Well, we _fancy _each other, apparently—“

“For God’s sake—“

“And we are having dinner. I think we are in a good mood. Don’t you?”

  
John licks his lips. Looks at Sherlock, and he can see in his eyes all the things they are going to be, love, become.

He doesn’t say anything in response, but he smiles and instead of kissing him, he reaches out for his hand.

And he’s so stuck there, the entirety of him compressed in the tip of his fingerprints, that he doesn’t notice Sherlock wants to say something until he does.

“John?”

John frowns. Sherlock’s expression is suddenly wildly different from the one he wore just a second ago. He looks serious and uncertain, and John doesn’t really get why.

He waits, then, maybe two minutes, and for all the while he can see Sherlock rearranging the words in his head, trying to orderly compose a music that John will understand.

“John, I know you have told me you stopped caring about certain things, and I do believe you, but nevertheless I need to ask you this. At your wedding—“

He immediately looks away, and Sherlock stops. “No,” says John, suddenly teary, and _fuck_, _fuck_ there are limits to the things his joy can put aside, are there?

“No, keep going. Say what you need to say.”

They are still standing, still in public, enfolded on the side of the road.

They are still holding hands.

“At your wedding, who told me to go away?”

John’s eyes quickly move back to his. Confused, scared, looking for a reassurance they both do and don’t find. “What?”

“It wasn’t you, was it?”

“Of course it was me,” John says, although it pains him to, because it was. It really was.

“I don’t mean literally.”

“Then what do you mean?”

  
Sherlock takes a deep breath. Holds John’s gaze with such courage and maturity that John has trouble facing. He does it anyway.

  
“You have always wanted to be someone, John. You have always tried to be the man everyone thought you were. You _wanted_ to be him, and for some of the time, you succeeded. I have met that man. He looks remarkably like you.”

John swallows. He can see where this is going, and yet, he can’t, not for the life of him he can’t.

He needs to hear it. Needs to feel it, like a shower after weeks spent in a cage covered in dirt.

“But you are not that man right now. Because that man would not hold my hand, that man would not kiss me or have dinner with me. Not in public, not behind closed doors, not anywhere. And I need to be sure that you actually left him behind.”

Sherlock takes the smallest of steps in his direction, like he is afraid John might leave. He takes his other hand, then, almost clumsily and yet with unstoppable determination.

“You were him for a long time. When I came back, I thought you looked so much like him that maybe there wasn’t a drop of John Watson left in you. I think you were him when you sent me away at your wedding.”

“And I know,” he continues, eyes open, vulnerable like John has never seen him, “I know you probably already realised it just about yesterday, but in case you didn’t: John, even if everyone you ever cared about wants you to be him, even if all the rules you have ever been taught make him the perfect man and you the most insidious, it doesn’t mean you_ have_ to be him.”   
“And I am not saying this just because I desperately want you to be the John Watson I know. I am not saying this just because if I do you might actually choose me over whatever else you have in your life— I am saying this because I see you the happiest when you do not wear this other man’s clothes. And I am afraid you will wear them again when the consequences of you kissing me in public will come. Because they will, John. Maybe they will be heavier than you expect, maybe much lighter, but they will come, and I need you to stay with me or I don’t want to this. I don’t want to start if we can’t keep going.”

At this point, John can feel himself crying. Sherlock stops talking, lowers his head, lets out a breath.

“I like him a lot,” he adds after a while, reassuringly, softly. “Who you are. You, John Watson. I like him a lot. But he needs help. Like me, like everyone else.”

“When did you learn all of this?” John asks, voice broken, and Sherlock smiles.

“I fell in love with you, and then it sort of progressed from there.”

John is properly sobbing now. He tries to speak again but he can’t, so Sherlock pulls him into a hug.

His tears stream down Sherlock’s fancy jacket, and his arms hold his back.

Sherlock unfolds around him, takes him in, protects him from the crowd and the wind and time when it runs out and life when it runs backwards and rain whenever it becomes too heavy.

“I promise,” John says, and he thinks he’s speaking so quietly that Sherlock might not be able to hear him, but he can feel him nodding.

“Okay,” Sherlock says.

“I do, I promise.”

“Okay. I believe you.”

They stay like that for a while. John can hear footsteps all around him, perhaps even someone stopping to ask if they are all right. Sherlock takes care of it, though, so John doesn’t have to worry about it.

“What you said,” John says into Sherlock’s shoulder, eventually, “it’s true. You are right.”

“Good,” Sherlock whispers, caressing the hair behind his ear.

“I will get help and I won’t run away.”

“Okay.”

“And I am going to be myself.”

“Okay.”

  
John pulls back, puts his hands on Sherlock’s shoulder. “No, I mean it. I am going to be myself.”

“Okay,” Sherlock repeats, smiling. Somewhere along proud.

“I don’t want to be that man. I don’t want to.”

“I am glad you don’t.” 

John closes his eyes, breathes.

“I am sorry,” he says.

“What for?”

_I am sorry I told you to go away, Sherlock. I am sorry I ended up on that roof, I am sorry I refused to love you even though I did. I am sorry I hurt you. Even if I didn’t mean to._

“I am sorry I spoiled the mood anyway,” he says out loud.

“You didn’t ruin anything. You put it back together.”

John smiles. “I really didn’t think you’d be such a romantic.”

“I am not,” Sherlock says, blushing, looking somewhere over John’s head. “I am just being honest.”

John raises to the tips of his feet, and kisses Sherlock’s cheek. “Thank you.”

Sherlock stares at him in utter, sudden disbelief, so John does it again, kisses his cheek, gentle and brief, and takes his hand when Sherlock is not paying attention.

“Thank you.”


	16. I love you too

It’s the stillness that surprises Sherlock the most.

The kissing, flirting, touching— it doesn’t scare him as much. It’s new, yes, and objectively unprecedented, but it’s an action.

It’s something that moves, it’s a flux that he has a part in shaping. It’s rewarding in ways that are verifiable.

As disgustingly romantic as it sounds, when he kisses John, he feels alive, everywhere, and he can feel that John is alive, too.

It’s a version of what he felt that first night, running through London together. It’s getting closer and closer to home but never actually opening the door, because home is already here.

And it’s home precisely because it moves, because it brushes Sherlock’s curls away from his eyes, because it laughs at his jokes. It’s home because it steps back only so that you can follow him, it’s home because he knows what you like and what you hate, it’s home because he gets mad when you underestimate yourself, because he mocks you when you misjudge your own facial expressions.

It’s home because you are his home, too. It’s home because it’s a mirror.

Because you catch the ball before it gets to your hands. Finish the sentence before he can start it, and finish it wrong. So he starts again —and yes, you guessed the first half correctly— and then he gives it his own conclusion and leaves you staring at him with these wide eyes that can only deduce so much.

It’s home because home is a thing you are making together. It’s home because it’s challenging, and hard, and alive and loved.

Sherlock knows this. Sherlock _feels _this. From the get-go.

But there are moments when you stop building, or even moving. When, for a little while, you just rest.

There are many of those, actually.

And it’s not the first ones that surprise Sherlock. The very first ones, in between looks and tears.

No, it’s those that come after. The ones that are deliberately _chosen_.

So, Sherlock finds it hard to sit still. And not because he doesn’t want to, but because he is afraid the house will just disappear when he is not looking.

Before, silence was his favorite place to be. He could pretend, in silence. Imagine that his relationship with John was of a different nature.

But now he doesn’t have to pretend, and that’s the scariest part.

What if he wants more than John is willing to give? What if he can’t provide what John needs? What if the house collapses? What if he says all the wrongs words, misreads all of the signals, what if—

“Sherlock?”

They are back in Baker Street, lying on Sherlock’s bed.

Sherlock is in his pyjamas. John his also in Sherlock’s pyjamas, since he hasn’t really brought any of his own.

They are not actually touching, but they are so close that Sherlock can feel John’s body warmth.

He looks at him now, and doesn’t know what to say.

“Mh?” he asks, uselessly.

“You have been staring at the ceiling for ten minutes now.”

“I know.”

“Of course you do.”

In spite of himself, Sherlock smiles. His heart is racing faster than it is polite. “I _did _notice.”

John just raises his eyebrows.

Sherlock waits, and waits, and waits. They stare at each other for what feels like hours.

Eventually, John opens his mouth to speak, and then promptly stops himself.

Sherlock can’t watch it happen.

“Say it.”

“What?”

“What you were trying to say. Just say it.”

He can see the words going over John’s head. He can see him thinking, trying to work out on his own whether or not he should actually voice his thoughts out loud.

  
“Can I hug you?” he asks, eventually, and Sherlock wonders why it is even a question.

“Of course,” he says.

John shifts on his side until half of his body lands on Sherlock’s. He wraps an arm around Sherlock’s waist, hides his face in Sherlock’s neck. Breaths in, deeply.

Sherlock closes his eyes, as if on clue, and breaths in with him.

Without questioning it, he too wraps his arm around him. Caresses his back, slowly and carefully. Angles his head so that he can kiss his hair.

Tries not to be too scared.

“I missed you,” John says, softly.

Sherlock doesn’t reply instantly, he is too startled for words, and so John keeps going.

  
“Not just after the wedding,” he adds, somehow quieter. “I missed you before that. Of course, I missed you when you were gone. And I missed you when you were here, too. I missed you when I went to bed and I was too scared to ask you to follow. But even before that, Sherlock, I missed you. Before I knew you, I mean.”

“I was waiting for you,” he says, and Sherlock can feel his lips moving against his neck. “I was waiting for someone to push me to my limits, to walk beside me. I was waiting for love, I think. And I know you find this very hard to believe, but I am choosing _you_, okay? I am choosing to stop looking because I think I have found it. I am choosing you.”

Sherlock starts crying.

It’s overwhelming. The sheer relief he feels. They joy.

He was supposed to know this already. It should have been established back when John had promised him he wouldn’t give up on them.

Barely four hours ago, that is.

But John looks up at him now, and if he is confused to see Sherlock’s tears, he doesn’t show it. He lowers back down, kisses Sherlock’s skin, just once.

“I want to be with you,” he says. “And you don’t have to earn it, Sherlock. I want it already.”

“Okay,” Sherlock manages to say.

They stay like that, in silence, for maybe twenty minutes.

Sherlock tries to let go.

He holds John and with him he holds every therapist John will ever have to talk to, every nightmare he will wake up from in a cold sweat, every irrational fear that will keep him up at night, every fight they will ever have, every traumatic memory that will ever unexpectedly resurface. He holds John and with him he holds every goodnight kiss, date night, case night, every Christmas gift and every inappropriate laugh.

They haven’t done anything yet, haven’t even tried, but Sherlock wonders how it will feel, to have sex with someone he loves. He wonders not because he feels rushed to try it, but just because John is here, and his future is only just beginning.

_I want to be with you_, he thinks in John’s voice, repeating the words over and over again in the hope that at some point no part of him will try to dispute them, and he is almost falling asleep in John’s arms when John says: “Do you want to play a game?”

“A game?” Sherlock asks, skeptical.

“Yeah, a game.”

“Why?”

“Just humour me, would you?”

Sherlock frowns. Nods.

“Fine.”

“You ever did that thing, when someone writes something on your skin and you have to guess what they have written?”

Sherlock hasn’t, but he doesn’t imagine he’ll be too bad at it. He shakes his head, wordlessly.

“Turn over,” John says, and Sherlock does. John moves aside to let him, and then he sits up beside Sherlock’s body, cross-legged. His left knee resting on the back of Sherlock’s thigh.

“Can I take off your shirt?” he asks, and Sherlock tenses.

He thinks about his scars. He thinks about John’s eyes, and how they will look when they will take in the sight of the injuries. He thinks that he will never know how they are going to look like, because he can’t watch it happen and even if he could he wouldn’t.

Sherlock is so bloody scared. He almost wants to say _no, it’s not necessary. We can do without._

But part of him knows they can’t. So he nods, hesitantly. As though waiting for a judge to say _guilty._

John carefully raises his shirt, and it takes more than Sherlock knows it would if the scars weren’t there. He waits for a gasp, a sight, a question, but none of that ever comes.

He feels John raising his arms, helping him out of the shirt. He hears John folding it and putting it somewhere behind him.

And, in the silence, Sherlock eventually feels John’s lips on his lower back.

John kisses the skin there, once. Twice, three times.

Sherlock breathes.

He feels himself exhaling as goose-bumps take over his body.

“Ready?” John asks, and Sherlock wonders if he is ever going to be able to tell him just how much he owes him. How much John has given him.

“Yes,” he says, and, inexplicably, with those three letters Sherlock finally allows himself to feel beautiful.

_Yes_, he says, and he is giving John permission to love him, just right after John showed him how.

“Okay,” John replies, so quietly that Sherlock wouldn’t have heard him if he wasn’t paying attention, and then, gentle, slow, careful, John starts tracing the letters.

He uses his whole back, building paths through his scars, rewriting them into a new history. He goes over each letter slowly. Taking his time to draw it.

It feels sacred, like a ritual.

I N C— I N C A S?

_No, wait._ I N C A S E.

_Oh, okay. In case._

Y O U H A, _in case you had. No, in case you hadn’t._

_In case you hadn’t, re— recalled? No, _R E A L I, _mh, okay, realised._

_In case you hadn’t realised._

I L O — _In case you hadn’t realised, I lov—_

_I love, I love. You. Too._

_In case you hadn’t realised, I love you too._

For a moment, no one says anything.

John doesn’t ask him if he has worked it out already. If he has to go over it again, just to be sure.

  
John lays down on his stomach just beside Sherlock, his face turned to him.

He watches him as his smile widens.

“You knew that, right?” John asks, and Sherlock doesn’t answer. He keeps smiling until John closes the distance and kisses him, until their bodies are intertwined in ways he is not quite able to fathom, until he is whispering _I love you _over and over again, and John is alive, and he is alive, and they are both there, forever, until their lives run out of time.


	17. ps: we are

_Harry?_

_hey! didn’t think you would message me back so soon_

_are you always awake at three in the morning?_

_Not until recently, no._

_did you need something?_

_No, I just._

_?_

_Problem solved, basically._

_Mostly. I mean, I am starting to solve it._

_I am happy to hear_

_Are you free this weekend?_

_yeah, I think so_

_Can we meet?_

_I’d love too_

_I want to divorce my wife_

_well. that was abrupt_

_She made me unhappy_

_I am glad you are divorcing her_

_she seemed like a bitch_

_not that I ever met her._

_Harry._

_sorry_

_too soon?_

_No. Actually, I am laughing a little too hard given the circumstances_

_ circumstances?_

_I am in bed and I should be quiet _

_Not alone_

_not with the wife?_

_Most definitely not._

_naked?_

_Not yet_

_I can’t fucking believe I am having this conversation with you_

_Can’t believe it in a good way or in a bad way?_

_good way_

_now shut up and just tell me who you are in bed with_

_Guess_

_are we 16 again?_

_C’mon, just guess_

_I know you know it_

_really? I do?_

_I know next to nothing about your personal life_

_You know enough_

_for fucks sake john, I don’t want to say it for you!!!_

_just come out like normal people do_

_…_

_I hate you_

_you don’t_

_just fucking say it_

_Sherlock_

_thats way too easy_

_the whole sentence_

_I am in bed with Sherlock_

_Sherlock Holmes._

_we were kissing until he fell asleep_

_in bed? with Sherlock Holmes??? I am SHOCKED_

_Stop it. can’t laugh_

_can’t believe you have achieved your life’s goal_

_God I hate you so much_

_stop lying!!! _

_and besides, you know_

_I actually am, proud._

_very, very much so_

_I know how hard it is_

_I am sorry I didn’t support you when you came out_

_I know. me too_

_but I can see why you didn’t_

_it’s fine now. I have moved on_

_You want to meet him?_

_Sherlock? of course I want to meet him_

_let me meet you first, tho_

_Deal_

_I’ll call you at a decent hour to set the details_

_okay_

_and, John?_

_I really hope you are going to be happy_

_you and Sherlock, I mean_

_I hope you are going to be happy too, Harry._

_I know I am not supposed to say this, but I love you_

_I think you are strong and courageous and noble in ways I could never be_

_wow. you should have a sexual identity crisis more often_

_I am not saying that just because you helped me_

_I truly believe it_

_well. thanks_

_you are not so bad yourself. give John Watson a little more credit _

_after all, you are here!!! in bed!!! with Sherlock Holmes no less!_

_I suppose that is true. _

_and by the way, I love you too_

_we'll see each other soon, okay?_

_promise_

_Promise._

_(ps: we are)_

_(going to be happy, I mean)_

_I know, John. I know._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading my story. hope you enjoyed the ride 🌻


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